Rehabilitation
by SoulRed12
Summary: A university student with a troubled past goes to a prof. at his school to buy a custom net-navi to help with his audio projects. The prof offers to design the navi for free but only if he can test a new "navi-cust" system on it; can he be trusted? SI
1. Prologue Part 1

Disclaimer: Megaman Battle Network and all related trademarks are copyright to Capcom. No financial gain of any kind was/will be derived from this work, and it is for entertainment purposes only.

**Prologue**

Adam is a 20-year-old, six-foot tall, black-haired full-time student at Central University, located in Central City. He is frequently seen wearing sunglasses and a bluetooth.

Laying on the bed in his dorm room, Adam suddenly felt a soft rumble. He remained still for a minute, and then his curiosity got the best of him. He got up from the bed, intending to head to the window, but in the process felt a second, stronger rumble which almost made him fall to the ground. He scrambled over to the window and looked out, but couldn't see anything unusual, except a few people outside who had fallen to the ground due to the shaking.

Out of nowhere, an ear piercing screech and roar ripped through Adam's ears at the same time. He clutched his ears in pain, even checking for blood (there was none). He tried his hardest to shut out the sounds, because he couldn't lose his hearing or his future as a student specializing in music technology would be gone.

Luckily, the screech and roar only lasted a few seconds, though they felt like years to him. "What the hell?" he exclaimed. "Maybe there's something on the news..."

His ears still throbbing, he looked around for the TV remote, spotting it on his bed. But just as he went to reach for it, he felt his body fly off the ground as a humongous earthquake shook through his small dorm room. His prized audio equipment even flew off the shelves; a few mixers managed to land unharmed on his bed, but many crashed and broke on impact with the floor.

"Damn!" he said, scrambling to grab the remote again while covering his head and salvaging whatever equipment he could. Finally able to turn on the TV luckily embedded in his dorm wall, he flipped through the channels until he arrived on a Central News breaking announcement. It showed a reporter standing in front of a damaged, locked down, and sectioned off Expo Site.

"...where just half an hour ago," began the reporter, "a young man and his friends were taking a tour and then became trapped inside. There have been attempts to discover what's happening inside, but all that the authorities can visibly see inside the building are what look like a number of Punk Navis jacked into copy-bots. Experts also say that they have readings of two very strong internet signals never before observed. Experts also say that the screech and roar heard a few moments ago are reminiscent of a legend, that tells the tale of two-"

The TV signal cut out. Adam waited in suspense, trying to imagine what might be going on in that Expo Site. After about ten minutes, the rumbling suddenly lessened, but it was a short hiatus; it soon picked up again at twice the intensity of before. Then the TV signal came back on.

"...not sure what could have caused-" the reporter began, but stopped as she was having trouble keeping her footing.

"Wait a minute, it looks like someone's coming out!"

Seven children were running out of the expo site.

"GET AWAY FROM HERE, NOW!" Yelled a relatively short, white and black haired kid wearing a red jacket and green pants. Adam recognized him as Chaud, an Official net-battler. "THAT BUILDING'S GONNA BLOW WITHIN SECONDS!"

"Wha...! Alright, let's move it back everyone!" the reporter ordered. "Now! Get back now!"

Adam had a sinking feeling in his stomach. All of the sudden the rumbling got even worse, even to the point where Adam couldn't hear himself speak; he fell to the ground.

Adam had always suspected that the dorms weren't built as well as they should have been, and his fears were confirmed when he heard metal creaking and wood splintering. Adam quickly crawled underneath his bed to avoid what he knew was coming...

The ceiling began to come down, and the wall with the window caved in. The door flew off its hinges. Luckily, Adam had managed to persuade the school's housing administrator to let him buy his own, bigger bed and have it placed in his dorm, so he seemed to be protected from all the debris. He shut his eyes, covered his ears to the best of his ability and waited for the rumbling and crumbling to stop.


	2. Prologue Part 2

**Prologue Part 2**

Finally, the rumbling stopped. Adam waited a few seconds before daring to move. He scooted out from underneath his bed, and took in the damage before him. The back wall (with the window) was completely nonexistant; or rather, it was existent, but existed all over the ground. He could see through the ceiling in various places to the floors above. In addition, the shelves he put up on the walls had dismounted and shattered on the floor.

All of his music equipment was now damaged beyond repair. "My songs!" he yelled to himself. He had just a few days previous finished recording the last of twelve songs for an album he had hoped to sell (and of course, to give his girlfriend Zoey). It was his first real album in all his eight years of production.

Adam frantically sorted through the debris looking for his hard drives. Getting cut while trying to wade across the room, he threw aside pounds and pounds of wood and equipment parts and brushed aside dust, finally finding the hard drives he was looking for. Unfortunately, they were hopelessly broken into shards. "No, not my songs...I just finished it!" he said, throwing the shards he had picked up back into the debris. He turned back to the missing wall. "What the hell just happened?" For a moment he wanted to turn on the TV for the news, but then remembered his entire room had just been decimated.

The missing wall led right out towards the middle of the campus (he lived on the first floor). He could see many other students struggling around, as if they too had been injured by the rumblings. The area outside his dorm room was open, probably meant to be a walkway for mass amounts of students, which meant that there wouldn't be much debris on the ground. Realizing this, Adam immediately waded across the broken room and triumphantly stepped outside; just as he did, more of the ceiling fell down. Looking back at the building, he thought to himself, "I hope everyone got out alright!" Since there was nothing worth looting left intact in what used to be his room, he decided to just run down to the Expo Site for some answers.

Adam arrived as close as the officials would allow him to get. The site had been completely leveled to the ground. The Expo Site building must have been built strongly, or stronger than his dorm, anyways, because most of the debris was relatively close to the site (but all inside the sectioned-off area). The buildings around it were badly damaged due to the vibrations, however. "What happened here?" he asked one of the officials.

"We can't comment yet." said the official.

"Look, an explosion here just destroyed my dorm room over at Central University. All due respect, sir, but I'd like some answers." He replied.

"I couldn't tell ya," said the official. "I really don't know. We're talking to the kids involved now, and we'll issue a press release when we're ready."

Adam waited around for a good half hour while the officials talked to Lan, Mayl, Yai, Dex, Chaud, Tab, and Mick; he didn't have anything better to do. Eventually, he noticed Mick finish speaking first and decided to take his chance to get answers. "Excuse me," he said, walking up to Mick in a deliberately nonthreatening way. "Hi, my name is Adam. Can you tell me what happened here?"

"Uh...I'd rather not talk about it. It's been kind of a long day." he said.

"Alright..." began Adam, with a sigh. "I didn't mean to bother you."

"It's just," Adam continued, almost without thinking, "I was in my dorm room when all this apparently happened, and the vibrations completely destroyed my dorm room over at Central University. Not to mention all of my audio equipment and the hard drives with the music I spent a year on which I was going try selling and giving to my girlfriend...and now it looks like I'm gonna have to redo all of it..."

"Whoops, sorry...you probably don't care...I was just hoping to get some answers."

"Well...that does suck...but it's nothing compared to what we went through!" Mick said. "Look, I just wanna get home."

"You're right, sorry. I'll just be going then..." started Adam, beginning to turn away.

Mick sighed. "Okay, well have you ever thought about getting a Navi to help you re-write the music? I hear the Navi and Internet Research department has some professors looking to make a few extra bucks programming Navis, you could always go there."

"A navi..." said Adam. Painful memories swirled through his head. "Yeah...Thanks..."

"...yeah, yeah. You're welcome." said Mick, walking away.

Adam strolled back towards Central U. As he approached the edge of campus, his phone rang. It was his girlfriend, Zoey. Her relatively high, sweet voice was always soothing to Adam. Adam answered: "Hello?"

"Adam! Oh my God, are you alright? Where are you?" she seemed almost hysterical. "I came to see you at your dorm and it was totally gone...I thought you had died under the wreckage! Why didn't you call me?"

"I'm sorry..." Adam said. "I wanted to find out what the hell happened."

"God, Adam...Why wouldn't you call me first?" she shot back.

"Look, Zoey. I'm sorry. I was thinking about the ear-splitting screeches and the fact that my dorm room just caved in on me."

"Well...alright. Just call me first next time!"

"Okay..."

"So..." Zoey began, "are you hurt?"

Adam paused. "No. I used my bed for protection from the falling ceiling. Where are you?"

"I'm at your dorm. Where are you?"

"Walking back to the campus. I visited the Expo Site. Seems that's where the explosion came from."

"Well come meet me. I have something I want to give you..."

Hanging up the phone, he went back to the site of his old dorm room, and saw Zoey standing there. She was a pretty girl, 5'6", about 130 pounds, and had medium-length reddish hair.

Zoey turned around and ran to Adam. "Zoey-" but before he could talk, she had already planted a kiss on him.

"I was so scared for you." she said.

"Listen Zoey." Adam started. "I was going to give you an album of songs I wrote...but my hard drives got destroyed in the wreck and the songs along with it."

"It's okay-" she started, but Adam cut her off.

"I'm going to get a navi to help me make it again."

She looked at him, shocked. "That's not funny."

"It's not a joke. I'm going to get a navi so I can remake the album and-"

Zoey slapped him. "Don't lie to me...You promised you wouldn't get another navi. You promised!"

Adam recoiled from the hit. "Damn it, Zoey. It's not going to be like that. I don't have the money to buy all that equipment again. I just need it for my music, so I can rewrite it...for you!"

"How can you tell me it won't be like last time? How can you tell me you won't go overboard with it again? Adam, do you even remember why you had give your last navi away? You couldn't STOP training it! You couldn't stop busting viruses, customizing forms, doing 'missions'. You didn't speak to your friends, your family, or me. It's not fair to anyone, INCLUDING whatever poor navi you create!"

Adam was holding back anger and shame. "I got through all that. I'm not the same any more. Don't you trust me?"

"It's not about trust...I want to protect you, even if it's from your own bad decisions. It's not WORTH the risk, Adam, especially not for one album!"

"I...am not a child," Adam said. "You don't have to protect me from anything."

"Adam...if you do this...I will leave you at the first sight of a problem. I'm telling you. I don't care if I'm right or not. If I see ANY evidence that you're battling or training again, I WILL leave. I love you, but I just can't go through that again. I can't. I'm sorry."

They looked at each other for what felt like hours, but was actually only about fifteen seconds. Adam was the first to speak. "Alright...so where do we go from here?"

"Do you have anywhere to stay?" she asked.

"No."

"Do you want to stay at my house tonight?" she asked.

"Sure!" Adam said, perking up.

"Hey, don't even think about it..." she immediately replied. "You're giving me a headache..."

So he went to her house, and slept on the couch.


	3. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1**

Adam woke up the next morning early (around 8am) to purposefully leave before Zoey woke up so she wouldn't try to talk him out of what he was about to do. He HAD to get a navi...it was the only way, he rationalized...he had changed...it'd be fine...needed it for music...

Zoey's house was small with only one story, exactly the kind of place you'd expect a college student to live. She refused to live in a dorm room, and her parents were quite wealthy so they paid for this small house for her while she was in the last years of school. Adam always like staying over because of how nice the house was and how close it was to the University...as well as another reason...

(the nice neighborhood)

Adam skulked around the house, getting ready for the day as quietly as he could. Finally, he wrote a note for Zoey to find when she woke up, and left the house. All along the way he had to continually tell himself all the reasons it would be "okay" to get a navi so he could keep taking each next step towards the Navi and Internet Research Department.

The distance from the house to the campus really was convenient, in more ways than one. The Expo Site, the campus, and the house seemed to be in a straight line from one another, so while much of the University was destroyed, there wasn't much damage to the house. In addition, within about ten minutes, Adam had already made it to the edge of campus, by walking.

He asked a random passing student to point him in the direction of the Navi and Internet Research Department. "NIRD?" the student said. "Yeah, it's just down that way, make a left, and keep going. You'll see it."

"Thanks," said Adam, and he continued in the directions the student told him.

He finally arrived at the front entrance to NIRD. The building was a lot less prestigious-looking than he had imagined, with only two stories, normal glass doors on self-closing hinges, and no hustling and bustling scientists running in and out hopeful that they had made the next breakthrough. It was almost depressing. Adam had always heard about all the activity and cutting-edge developments at a place called SciLab, but never had the time nor money to travel there (nor, perhaps, did he want to anger Zoey...). He had hoped NIRD would be some sort of replacement for that, but it didn't look like it would be.

Adam opened the doors, and walked into the lobby. It was moderately large, and relatively impressive, especially coming from the dull facade outside. Adam estimated approximately a 10-foot-high ceiling, with benches along the walls, a wide front desk in the center of the back wall, and two pathways on either side of the desk leading further back to various research rooms. Adam stopped for a moment to take in what he hoped was a promise of a more interesting visit than he originally assumed. He wanted to go upstairs just to further investigate, but he knew what he was there to do, and being that it was a weekend, the building itself wouldn't be open for very long except during the early morning. He realized he should get going.

He walked up to the receptionist, a pretty young blond girl somewhat older than Adam, who was doing some paperwork. "Excuse me, I was told that some of the professors here do some side-work programming custom navis. Where can I find one?" he asked.

"Side work? Professors here shouldn't be doing side-work, it's against their work and research agreements," she said. "But off the record," she looked around, "I heard some similar rumors, so why don't you go around and ask some of the professors if, ahem, it's true."

"Alright, thanks..." Adam said. He flipped a coin in his head (which he later realized made no sense at all) and decided on the left pathway.

He walked down the pathway, silently trying to choose the first door to try. He decided on room X27, which was on the right, three doors down from the pathway entrance. He peered inside the small window on the door, seeing an average classroom with a desk off to the left, chairs and tables to the right, and various programming-related posters all along the walls. Looking further left, he saw a lone professor writing something down at the desk. When Adam knocked on the door, he saw the professor look towards him and yell, "Yes, come in, please."

Adam entered. "Yes, what is it, please?" the professor said. He looked like he was in his late 40s, with dark hair though he was slightly balding. He wasn't very tall, and had a very strange expression that made him seem like he was eternally perplexed.

Trying his hardest to not sound pushy, Adam said, "Hi, my name is Adam. I'm looking to get a custom net-navi designed, and I'm willing to pay...I heard a rumor that some of the professors here do some side work programming..." Adam thought for a moment. "...and I wanted to see if it was true."

The professor looked around. "Yes, I do program navis." Adam's face lit up at such fortune on his first try. "My name is Dr. Ito," the professor continued. "What exactly are you looking for, please?"

Adam thought for a moment. "I just want a navi...one that can help me write some music, and maybe protect my equipment from virus attacks," Adam said, remembering one day when he lost a song due to a virus that invaded his computer, against which he had no defense. "I won't really use it to battle though."

"Yes, that's of course possible, and..." Dr. Ito began, "...I have an option that might be just what you need. It's...well, think of it as an experimental navi-customizer framework. And if you let me test it out by installing it in your navi, I'll let you have it for free.

"It'll also let me customize the navi very easily for you. I can make it very good with audio, and even install some programs that no other navi could ever use. There's just one thing, please..."

"...what?" Adam inquired.

"...It won't be able to use battle chips." Ito said.

"Uh...well why not?" Adam asked. "Something to do with the experimental navi-cust?"

"Yes, well not exactly...it's more like, uhm...well..." Dr. Ito couldn't seem to find the right words.

Suddenly Zoey's voice echoed in Adam's head. "You know what, it doesn't matter actually," he said. "As long as it can delete average viruses alright, no battlechips will be fine..." He figured that taking away battlechips would be the best option anyways, as it would also take away any possible temptation to start battling for real again. "Thanks a lot, Dr. Ito."

"Yes, it's not a problem, please." Dr. Ito said. Adam anxiously turned to leave; it finally started to bug him that Dr. Ito kept using the words "yes" and "please" when they weren't needed.

"Oh," Adam said, turning back, "when should I come back to get my navi?"

"Yes, well, later tonight it should be done. About 11:00pm, please."

"Won't this place be closed then?" Adam asked, though he didn't really want to hear Ito talk again.

"Yes, but that way the rest of the staff won't know I'm doing this work. It's against regulations to program on the side. Anyway, come back tonight, please." Ito said.

Adam was astonished that he managed to use both words normally in one sentence. Nevertheless, he was still ready to leave, and so he did.

Adam spent the day wandering around Central Town, sitting in cafés, looking through various stores, and checking in on some of his University friends who were also displaced by the incident the day before. Eventually, the time approached 10:30pm, and Adam knew he should start heading back.

He arrived back at NIRD about 10 minutes before 11:00, and knocked on the glass. Approximately 30 seconds passed with no response inside, so Adam decided to knock harder. Finally Adam saw Ito walking up to the doors, and then let him in.

"Yes, you're early, please." Ito said. "Yes, no problem, I finished just now. Come this way, please."

Adam followed Ito through the empty lobby, down the left hallway and inside room X27. This time, there was a large screen pulled down, and a projector set up on a sliding table in the middle of the room. Dr. Ito turned on the projector with a remote control, and on the screen there appeared a net-navi who was standing on what Adam remembered to be the internet as seen through one's PET, from back when he owned one.

"Yes, this is DeeJay-exe." Ito said. "Your new net-navi." Adam's face lit up. "I've installed the, uh, new navi-customizer, and everything seems to be working well, please. I've done thorough testing."

The navi on the screen was wearing mostly black, including sunglasses, as well as a purple belt and purple gloves and shoes. The navi's black helmet was quite distinctive, looking almost like a reversed beret that had its bill elongated into somewhat of a point. In addition, the navi was wearing a distinctive pair of purple headphones, and a yellow mp3-player-like object on its right wrist with a retractable wire connecting the two. Finally, it had an emblem on his chest that looked like a cd. "Hello," DeeJay said, looking outward at Adam and Ito.

"Wow," Adam mused to himself.

"Yes, this navi has been expertly customized to be your ultimate music assistant." Ito said proudly. "He can't help you with the creative side of it, but anything you need him to do concerning the data will be done quicker than you could possibly imagine. Just tell him what to do, and he can do it. He knows about every music-based file type as well as the specific encoding used and how to convert from any one format to another, not to mention knowledge of how every known audio data enhancer or modifier works."

Adam didn't know whether to be more paralyzed by the concept of having his own navi again, or by the sheer shock of the fact that he's getting for free the equivalent of the equipment for which he had previously paid over $1000. "Th-thank you," he managed to blurt out.

"I also have a special PET for him," Ito continued, and Adam made a sigh of relief as he had just realized he forgot to buy one. "You'll need to use it, because it's the only one that'll be compatible with the new navi-cust. It's called an RPET."

The new PET model that Ito handed Adam was quite intriguing. It still had a similar outwardly design, but had a long handle that jutted out from the main section at somewhat of an angle. The handle was attached to the main section of the PET on a hinge, to accommodate for left-handed net-ops.

"Great," Adam said, looking at this new device. "So where can I try him out?"

"Yes, you can't try him out yet, please." Ito said. "You're going to need time for his data to become more stable. The new navi-cust is…well, just give it some time. Yes, no using DeeJay until tomorrow, please."

Adam was too excited to ask questions. He just wanted to get home so he could sleep, wake up, and boot up his navi. "Hi…DeeJay…my name is Adam, and I'm your net-op."

"I see," said the navi. "Well then, it is nice to meet you." DeeJay spoke with a soothing and respectful, yet unemotional tone.

"Well, uh, I'm sorry but I have to boot you down for now. I'll turn you back on in the morning..." Adam said.

"Don't worry about it. You should do what you feel is right." DeeJay said.

With that, Ito pressed a few buttons, and DeeJay jacked out of the net, and back into the RPET. Ito took the RPET from Adam and after pressing a few more buttons, the device turned off. "Yes, press these two buttons together when you want to turn it back on in the morning, please." Ito said, pointing to two buttons on the top of the device. "Press this one," he said, pointing to a larger, orange button near the display, "to turn on the navi-cust graphical user interface. From there you can customize DeeJay further, though don't EVER remove the program labeled, 'rehab'."

"Why? What will happen?" Adam said.

"Yes, just don't do it, please. Removing it will cause DeeJay to become…unstable…" Ito began, cautiously. "Anyways, I have locked it, so you don't have to worry. I have the password in my brain, please. Just don't ask me for it."

"Alright, I guess that's all I need to know. Thanks again!" Adam said enthusiastically. He waved goodbye to the Dr. and left back through the NIRD glass front doors.

Adam almost instinctively began to walk towards the old location of his dorm room, but remembering that it had been leveled, he headed back to Zoey's house. He knocked on the front door, and within a few seconds Zoey opened it for him. Adam noticed her look down at the RPET now on his belt, but then deliberately ignore it. "Hey, thanks for letting me in." Adam said.

"Of course," Zoey replied, as they walked back in the house together. He then turned to her.

"So…" Adam started, waiting for a response from Zoey. After a few seconds of silence, he continued, "…tonight….how about it…?" He observed Zoey for a moment who had raised her eyebrow.

Adam slept on the couch that night.


	4. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

When Adam woke up, he nearly flew off the couch to pick up his RPET and wake up DeeJay-exe. He sat up, took the device off the coffee table in front of the couch, and pressed the buttons in reverse of what Dr. Ito did to turn it off.

The RPET lit up and after a moment, DeeJay appeared on the screen. Appearing slightly groggy he said, "Time to get up?"

"Shh…" Adam said. "Zoey—er, my girlfriend—is still sleeping. Let's go outside."

Adam walked outside as quietly as possible with his new navi. Finally outside, he found a nice comfortable spot in the shade underneath a tree and sat down. "I suppose it's time to show you what I can do," DeeJay said.

"What you can do? I thought Ito designed you to not be a battler…" Adam said.

"Well, I wasn't designed with compatibility for battle chips," DeeJay said, "but Dr. Ito commented in his code that I was meant to protect your audio equipment from viruses. Therefore I've been given a few weapons to use in that capacity. If we go into the net and find a simple virus, I can show you…"

"Well, okay…but we're not going to do anything else." Adam said, reassuring himelf more than DeeJay.

Adam walked across the street going towards the University to a NetCafe that existed there. He walked in the door to a rather large room with windows along the walls, bar-like tables under the windows, and normal tables dotting the center area. Spotting an open computer, he asked the employee behind the counter for a password and went back to log on. Realizing what he had to do for the first time in over a year, he hesitated for a moment, and then pointing at the computer's jack in terminal said, "Jack in! DeeJay, execute!"

Adam saw DeeJay emerge on the computer screen on the very large NetCafe homepage. It was diamond-shaped with blue tiles, and a few BBS's along the sides. Many navis were on the homepage interacting with each other. Adam felt sort of out of place, but said, "Okay, DeeJay, why don't we look around for a few viruses, and then you can show me what you've got."

Deejay traveled out through a warp in the center of the page straight to Central Area 1. He walked around for a few seconds before he noticed a few mettaur viruses munching on some data in the corner of the internet's road. "Perfect for a little target practice, yes?" DeeJay said.

"Well…maybe we ought to find some viruses that are actually hurting someone. These guys are just having lunch…" Adam said.

"If that's what you want." DeeJay said, still retaining the entirely emotionless expression on his face.

DeeJay kept onwards around a few turns until he finally found another green "standard" navi in the process of busting a few mettaurs and some canguards that were attacking him.

"...alright, how's this? Acceptable to you?" DeeJay said.

"Yeah, go ahead. Help out that navi over there." Adam said.

"Excuse me, why don't you allow me to deal with a few of these viruses," DeeJay said to the navi.

"Be my guest," the green standard navi called back. He wasn't having too much trouble, but still seemed to appreciate the help.

"Alright, let's get ready, Adam." DeeJay said. "This should be a simple battle, so I don't need any operation; I'll take care of everything."

Two of the mettaurs and one of the canguards turned to face DeeJay, aligning themselves with the canguard in the middle and the metts on the sides.

"First, is a regular buster, as I'm sure you've seen before." DeeJay said. His arm changed to a buster and he shot at the mettaur. The virus recoiled somewhat, but ultimately looked unscathed. "As you may have guessed, I'm not really a gun-based navi…"

As he said this, the canguard raised its shield, and sent its crosshairs to lock onto DeeJay. Noticing this, Adam started to say "look out," but DeeJay interrupted him by raising his arms. Suddenly, a MuteAnt virus appeared to the right of and behind DeeJay, and began to play its music. The crosshairs went away, as the canguard and the mettaurs all seemed to be searching for where their opponent went.

"Trumpy-summon," DeeJay said, smugly. "I have data for four trumpy viruses and I can therefore summon Trumpy for fanfare, Tuby for discord, Tromby for timpani, and MuteAnt for silence."

All three viruses immediately seemed to become quite frustrated, and realized what was causing the problem. They all turned to the MuteAnt who started looking anxious. As the metts raised their picks to make an attack, suddenly Adam watched DeeJay extend both his arms to his sides and then quickly whip them inward. About half a second afterward, both mettaurs were deleted.

"Wow! What was that?" Adam said.

"One of my charge moves, note-shuriken." DeeJay said. "What you just saw was two very fast shurikens hitting and deleting their targets."

"Amazing," was all Adam could say. He could feel the desire to start training building up inside him, but did his best to ignore it.

DeeJay turned his attention to the canguard. The MuteAnt had expired in the while DeeJay was explaining his attacks to Adam, and the canguard had raised its shield. By this time, the other navi had also finished his viruses and was watching DeeJay fight out of pure intrigue.

The canguard had locked on to DeeJay and took its shot. DeeJay was hit in the chest and recoiled slightly, but not visibly damaged. Looking intently at the canguard, who was keeping its shield up trying to get another shot in, DeeJay took his right arm and swung it outstretched to the side with an open palm. Immediately after doing so, a small whirlwind just under DeeJay's height flew across the road towards the virus. Upon contact, the virus sustained a number of very quick hits and then exploded.

"That was great, DeeJay…you have some nice attacks." Adam said. DeeJay looked towards Adam's RPET screen and said nothing.

The standard navi walked up to him. "That was some pretty sweet bustin'," he said. "Ya know…I'm the navi for a man named Dak Burner, who's one of the judges for an a tournament that's coming up in about three months. Maybe you'd like to sign up for it? Normally we wait for navis to apply, but we need some INTERESTING fighters. For example, I wouldn't be accepted because I'm just a standard navi. But you, you're pretty spiffy, and those attacks were quite entertaining. I can't wait to see what else you've got in you…

"Anyways, I'm rambling. What do you say? You think you'll want to join?"

"I'll have to defer to my op on that one." DeeJay said, looking once again towards the RPET screen.

So many thoughts raced through Adam's head. It would be amazing fun to join a tournament, but that would mean…training for it. Back when he had his last navi a year ago, his ultimate dream was to join and win a tournament, but what would it mean now? Losing his girlfriend and possibly even getting so obsessed again he would quit school? They only barely agreed to let him back in last time…Then again, DeeJay couldn't use battle chips, so perhaps there was no point. But maybe he didn't need them! After what Adam had seen a few minutes prior he couldn't be sure what other tricks the black and purple navi had up his sleeve.

After some more internal deliberation, he decided on a response. "Let me think about it," he said.

"That's fine, I get it, you can't rush into big commitments like these," the navi said, "but don't wait too long! The deadline to apply is a month before the start of the tournament. That means you need to figure it out before two months from now, ya hear?"

"I understand, thanks." Adam said, and the navi jacked out. "DeeJay, why don't you sit down for a cup of cyber coffee or something. I'm gonna get something to drink myself."

"I guess that sounds good." said DeeJay, and Adam walked off to order his drink, putting his RPET in his pocket. DeeJay walked further down the main road in Central Area 1 to the InternetCafe near the entrance to Central 2. It was a relatively small, enclosed building with green walls and a few windows along those walls with booths underneath, as well as see-through glass doors.

Walking inside the door on the right side of the front wall, he looked around and saw many navis of all sorts talking and socializing. DeeJay walked casually up to the green standard navi behind the medium-height counter in the back-right corner of the room, and said, "One coffee, please," handing over 10z.

"No problem," the navi said, turning around to make the coffee.

But just as DeeJay sat down at a table in front of the counter, about fifteen medium-height orange and dark blue navis with single transmitter antennas on their heads surrounded the café. DeeJay looked around, observing them carefully. The rest of the navis in the café were alarmed, looking around frantically, wondering what was going on. The navi behind the counter had also stopped cleaning cups and making drinks.

Just as the orange and dark blue navis finished getting into formation, one of them near the entrance announced over a sound amplifier, "This is the net-police. We have surrounded the café. Come out with your hands up and your op's PET on the ground."

DeeJay wasn't alarmed, but still watched and waited. He looked at each navi in the café, trying to figure out whom it might be that the net-police navis were "surrounding." He couldn't see anybody suspicious.

Peering outside through the windows, DeeJay could confirm that the officials had then indeed surrounded the building. Whoever they were looking for wasn't getting out.

"We'll give you exactly five seconds from when I start counting," the same police navi said, "and then we are going to close in on the café and apprehend you by force."

"Five.

"Four.

"Three.

"Two!

"One!

"Alright, let's go boys. He's in there, I've confirmed visual."

The navis immediately blitzed the café, with most of them entering through the front door and the rest standing outside as backup. All the civilian navis were now standing in a compressed group off in the left side of the café in a state of mild panic, except DeeJay who was still calm yet alert. As the net-police came in, DeeJay saw who they were looking at—him! He pushed back his chair and stood up, as one of them said, "Stay where you are. There is no escape!"

The net-police closed in further around DeeJay, moving very cautiously and aiming all sorts of battlechip weapons from vulcans to wideswords to highcannons. "What the hell do they want me for?" DeeJay thought to himself, taking steps back as the officials took steps forward, until he was flush against the counter. He looked upward at the RPET screen, but only saw the inside of Adam's pocket. "Guess I have to do THIS on my own, too…" he said.

"Hold on," DeeJay said out loud. "I don't know what you think you're doing, but you have the wrong guy."

The net-police ignored him, and kept advancing very slowly. As the navis moved within a few feet, DeeJay jumped in the air and did a backflip, landing behind the counter he was sitting at. The navi previously behind the counter jumped away from him and ran towards the group of scared navis to the left, who were now jacking out one-by-one. He ducked underneath, and got ready to act. Just then, he noticed Adam pull the RPET out of his pocket, and look at the screen.

"Wha—What the hell is going on?" Adam said

"No time to explain. Just be silent for a moment." DeeJay whispered, and Adam just watched.

DeeJay changed a setting on his yellow mp3-player-like device. Then he began to speak. "COME AND GET ME!" he yelled; except this didn't come from his direction. The voice came from the opposite corner of the café; and it was so loud and forceful that every navi left in the café couldn't help but turn their attention out of surprise.

DeeJay took that instant to do what he needed to do. He stood up and immediately waved his arm outstretched in an arc in front of him. "Tornaudio!" he yelled, as a whirlwind of sound flew out of his body and traveled in a curved path hitting most of the police navis, and creating a clearing between a few of them by propelling some out the door and the rest to the other side of the café.

All the navis left were looking terrified or otherwise very anxious, as were, Adam noticed as he looked around the real NetCafé, most of the other net-ops around him.

DeeJay darted out the door, throwing it closed as he left and running away from the café as fast as he could.

Finally realizing who DeeJay's opponents were (not having seen what the Net-Police navis look like in over a year), Adam said to him, "DeeJay, those are the net-police! They're on our side!"

"Our side? They were intent on arresting me!" DeeJay said, with contempt in his voice.

"For what? What did you do while I was gone?" Adam asked with dismay, in as low of a voice as he could so the other ops in the café wouldn't realize that he was DeeJay's op. Looking around, he noticed that nobody was looking at him so his identity seemed safe.

"I didn't do anything," DeeJay said, still calm but somewhat stressed. "Just jack me out!"

"Okay…jack out!" Adam said, pointing the RPET at the computer. Nothing happened, except a message appeared on the screen:

_JACK OUT FUNCTION LOCKED BY OFFICIAL AUTHORITY._

"It…it says the net-police locked my ability to jack you out! I didn't know they could do that…" Adam said.

DeeJay continued running away from the café, bumping into various navis along the way. He hoped to get to the portal that would take him back to the NetCafe home page, from where he might be able to jack out using the portal at which he appeared when he jacked in.

Unfortunately, when he finally reached it, he found that the portal back to the NetCafe homepage had been disabled. Looking back at the police navis chasing him, he realized this was the end of the line. There was no way he could escape 15 navis plus whatever backup they had already summoned, with no battlechips.

"Damn it," was all DeeJay could say.

"Graaaah!" Adam yelled, as he continued trying to jack him out, but it was still no use. The net police came within a few feet, and DeeJay decided to give no further resistance, instead putting his hands up.

"You are under arrest," one of them said. Seeing his hands up, two other net-police navis ran up and handcuffed him.

"Alright boys, great work. We got him," the same navi said to the other police navis still running behind him, who then stopped and jacked out. Next he turned back to the two navis holding DeeJay.

"Take him away," he said. "Jack out!"

And all four of them disappeared.


	5. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

Adam stood there in the cafe with his mouth hanging open.

"Oh thank god the police caught that navi," he heard one of the other patrons say.

"Yeah, who knows what it would have done!" another said.

Most of the people left in the café were making similar statements. What Adam couldn't understand, was why the police had wanted to arrest DeeJay. He had only just been programmed yesterday…right? And since then, he had either been inactive, or with Adam the entire time! It must be a mistake, then, Adam concluded.

Adam rushed out of the still-crowded café, shoving open the doors, going down onto the sidewalk, and crossing the street walking east, the opposite direction from the school. He was determined to find out just what was going on. Walking slightly faster, he hopped back onto the next sidewalk, and started north towards the city police station.

After traveling about five blocks, he finally arrived. The police station, a silver building with many windows and the Central City flag painted above the front entrance, was rather tall compared to the stations he had seen in other towns when he had visited. It was also very nicely built; the entrance was raised with a nice, small flight of concrete steps leading up. To either side of the steps were patches of grass, with identical trees and plants arranged exactly the same as the other side.

Adam walked up the steps, and approached the large glass door which he swung open. As he walked inside he saw a wide waiting room with many chairs arranged in rows. It must not have been a busy day for them, as he only counted four people in the chairs. The two side walls had various posters with messages one would expect to see in a police station, such as "Report suspicious activity" and "Have you seen this man?" On the back wall, between two identical elevators in the corners on either side, there was an information window behind which a good-looking 30-year-old brunette woman in a blue police uniform sat at a desk with a computer on it. Adam walked straight up to the window.

"Excuse me, officer…" Adam said, trying to sound polite though he was quite perturbed, "My navi was just arrested and I think it's in error."

"Alright," the woman politely said, "What is your navi's name?" 

"DeeJay-exe," Adam said.

"Okay," the woman said, as she typed the name into her computer. She waited for a few moments, hit a few more keys, and waited even longer. Since he couldn't see what was on the computer screen, Adam watched her face intently for any sort of reaction.

Suddenly, the woman's eyes widened, and her mouth opened slightly. Adam got quite nervous; what could she have possibly seen on that screen?

"I'm sorry," she said in a serious tone, "I can NOT discuss this case with you."

"Wha—why not? That's my navi!" Adam said.

"Yes you said—wait, so this is YOUR navi? You own DeeJay-exe?" the woman questioned.

"YES, I just said that!" Adam shot back.

"I see…why don't you wait over there in one of those seats, and I'll…see what I can do…" the woman said.

Adam was apprehensive at the tone of the woman's voice; it sounded somewhat suspicious, but he figured it was probably due to whatever she had seen on the screen. Besides, he didn't want to lose another navi, so he did as he was told. As Adam walked away from the window to the closest empty seat in the front row, he glanced back and saw the woman grab up her phone and start talking to someone while staring at him. He got even more nervous; did he say something wrong?

It had only been about fifteen seconds when he saw two large dark-haired male police officers emerging from the elevator to the right of the information window. They walked directly towards him. Adam eyed the police officers coming in his direction and then, in the weak hopes that they were merely coming to talk to him about DeeJay, stood up and began to speak. "So, what's going on with Dee—"

The first officer on Adam's right, a burly man with an unusually large torso compared to the size of his legs, stopped in front of him, and the second officer on his left, a still large but more averagely proportioned man, grabbed Adam's left arm and taking out a pair of handcuffs, put it behind his back. The officer on his arm had a very odd, unpleasant, musty smell to him, and Adam wished the other cop was cuffing him.

"I'm officer Jackson, and this is officer Harold," the first officer said. "You're under arrest for internet terrorism. You have the right to remain silent, and anything you say can and will be used against you in the court of law."

"What the hell is this?" Adam said. Neither officer took heed of Adam's question and kept reading him his rights.

"You have the right to an attorney—" officer Jackson continued.

"No! WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?" Adam said, finally becoming outwardly angry. He usually kept his anger hidden inside and displayed it as a pissed-off politeness. His arms were now handcuffed behind his back, and the second officer was guiding him towards the elevator. "I'm no internet terrorist, you idiots!"

At that, officer Harold "accidentally" guided Adam straight into the left wall of the elevator, before it had fully opened.

"You didn't think you were off the hook, did you?" officer Jackson said. "Just because you're his op? You're just as culpable as he is."

"WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?" Adam yelled, now fully inside the large elevator. The officer pushed the button to go to the third floor, and the cabin began to move upwards. "I'm not a terrorist! Why would I be a net terrorist? I have no idea what you're talking about, any of it! You're all crazy if you think I did whatever it is you're accusing me of…" Right after saying it, he realized how unconvincing his speech was.

When the elevator opened its doors on the third floor, the officers took Adam across a narrow windowless hallway with blue walls and high ceilings until they reached another window. "We've got another one for booking here."

Adam went through the entire booking process, and then the two arresting officers took him back through the narrow hallway away from the window towards the elevator. "Now it's time to go to the holding cell…"

"Don't I get a phone call…or something…" Adam said, exasperated.

"Yeah, whatever. Make it quick," said officer Harold. They pointed to a black classic-style payphone on the nearby wall. Officer Jackson handed him a 5-zenny coin, and Adam thought for a moment about who he should call.

Zoey was first to his mind, but he couldn't call her. His relationship with her was already on the edge just by the fact that he got a navi; telling her about THIS, the trouble he had gotten into because of a navi, would probably drive her away completely. As for his parents, his mother was out of the country on business, and his father had gone missing almost 3 1/2 years ago. Three years was the cutoff in that city for missing persons searches to terminate, so his father was presumed dead and he and his mother had just had the funeral five months ago.

His attention turned to his friends. He quickly thought of one of his good friends, Robert. He had known Robert for about three years (having met him in an introductory English class back in highschool), and they had occasionally discussed Robert's father who had been in the Central City police force for four years before retiring three months ago. Perhaps, he thought, Robert still had connections or friends in the police department that would at least allow him to find out what was going on.

"Alright, 555-4127…" Adam whispered to himself, as he dropped the quarter in the payphone. He pushed the buttons and prayed to himself that his friend would pick up.

One ring…

Two rings…

Three rings…

"Hello?" said a familiar deep voice from the telephone, and Adam let out a huge sigh of relief.

"Robert! It's Adam!" Adam said.

"Sorry, I can't come to the phone right now. Please leave a message after the beep." Adam heard Robert's voice say.

"DAMMIT!" Adam whispered harshly under his breath.

Just as he was about to hang up the phone in defeat, he heard more:

"Wait, wait, wait! I was just kidding! Adam? What are you doing calling from the police station?" Robert said.

Adam paused for second before deciding he wouldn't comment on his friend's sense of humor. "I don't know, my new navi was just arrested by the police and-" Adam started, but was cut off.

"Dude, you got a new navi? That's awesome!" Robert said. "But you had that crazy obsession thing with the last one…did you go to a therapist or—"

"Look, can you please just listen to me for a minute?" Adam said as calmly as he could, though he was annoyed that his friend would bring up that subject. "For some reason they arrested me too, and they won't listen to a thing I say or tell me what's going on…can you come down here and maybe talk to some of them?"

"Um…yeah. So you're actually, like, gonna be locked up, at the police station? That's crazy…" Robert said.

"YES, please just get down here…" Adam said, still trying to remain as calm as possible so as to not offend his friend who potentially held the key to his freedom.

"Alright, dude, alright…don't have to be so cranky…" Robert replied. They said goodbye to each other and got off the phone.

Just as the receiver touched the phone box, Officer Jackson shoved Adam towards the elevator. Officer Harold stuffed him inside, and Officer Jackson followed. The door shut, and Officer Jackson hit a button to go to the second floor. Adam felt the car start moving downward, and stop soon after on the second floor. The door opened and the two officers nudged Adam out.

Adam watched the door close behind him, and then looked around to his new surroundings. He was in a rather round room, shaped like a half-circle with a straight wall containing the doors to the elevators and the curved wall having jail detention cells.

The room itself was rather dark, being lit by one rather powerful bulb in the center of the ceiling and small glass windows inside the approximately dozen cells, and had a large open area in the center and cells along the sides. It was mainly white—white ceilings, floors, and walls—with some blue walls inside the individual cells (likely to keep the detainees from going insane). The facility was obviously not meant to hold many people overall, and the place was nearly empty; there was, however, one cell on the other side of the room that was occupied by a very tall and menacing looking man with no hair on the top of his head but a lot of hair all over his face. He reminded Adam somewhat of a shaved gorilla.

The cells themselves were arranged side by side along the curved wall. They looked rather high-tech, at least compared to what Adam had seen on TV, with almost fully transparent glass doors that had small, white keypads with clear buttons built into them. Adam could see wires traveling through the glass towards the side of the cell, attaching the keypad to what was most likely a master computer somewhere else. Adam figured the glass must have been soundproof as well, because he saw the man in the cell on the other side of the room moving his lips with some odd hand movements but couldn't hear a word. It was probably for the best, he thought.

The three of them walked up to one of the cells (thankfully a number of cells away from the gorilla man) and Officer Jackson let him go to push a few numbers on the keypad. _Beep beep beep beep beep…_And the cell door opened with a airy swish, moving the keypad near the side of the cell.

Officer Harold shoved Adam inside, and after a few more button pushes on the keypad, the door shut again with the same noise. The two officers walked away, chuckling to each other and saying something Adam now couldn't hear.

The cell he was now in was quite small. The inside consisted merely of a flat, rectangular metal protrusion from the back wall that Adam figured was meant to be used as some sort of excuse for a bed; he told himself he'd rather sleep standing up. Other than that, there was a glass window in the back wall above the "bed," and very little space for pacing.

During his alone time (at least, the time in which he didn't pay attention to gorilla-man), he thought about his past. He thought about his previous navi, Psychman-exe. The two grew quite close over the months they were together. He received Psychman-exe as a gift from his mother while she was in her job out of the country. She was never very attentive overall, but Adam knew it wasn't out of a lack of affection; it was more likely the result of having Adam's father, Don, who had been a relatively high-ranking net official in another city, ripped away from her so suddenly when he disappeared. So instead, she bought and sent Adam a custom navi as an effort to "prove" she wasn't ignoring him though she was far away.

Psychman was a clever navi who was quite skilled in battling with his mind. He wasn't necessarily psychic, but could get a reading on the battle chip his opponent was about to use, allowing him to (hopefully) react accordingly. His body was relatively dark blue, and he had gold bands around his wrists, ankles, stomach, and head, and his emblem of a face with a lightning bolt on it right in the middle of his forehead.

Psychman's signature move was generating electricity in his body (also using his mind), and discharging it to the opponent when in the near vicinity. When allowed to concentrate, the electricity generated by Psychman could be devastating. He had many other abilities, Adam remembered, but he couldn't recall the specifics, probably because he had been trying to block it all out from his mind for so long.

Adam remembered very well, however, how it all had ended. The two met just after the Adam started studying at Central University. Adam had always wanted a navi but never had time to get one; his academics came first. But Psychman was thrust upon him, and he couldn't just say no and get rid of him…

Nothing bad happened for the first two months; he had been with Zoey since six months before that, and during those two months he was still able to go out with her, as well as juggle schoolwork. But starting the third month, things changed. Notice of an upcoming tournament reached Adam, and he and Psychman decided it might be "fun" to enter it. Unfortunately, that's when it all went downhill.

Adam started training for the tournament, and never really stopped. He found he had a "passion" for training, perhaps too much of a passion. Psychman never complained; he always loved the workouts and intense drills. But Adam stopped sleeping, and hardly ate. From what she told him, Zoey had apparently began worrying after not seeing Adam for two weeks (only having spoken to him on the phone a few times). He remembered calls he got from various members of his family whom Zoey had called in an effort to recruit them to help her talk Adam out of this training frenzy, but he eventually just stopped taking their calls. A week after the end of the third month, Adam had even put in notice with his academic counselor that he was quitting school to become a net-battler full-time. But finally, in the middle of the fourth month, called Adam's best friends Robert, Jason, and Megan to help Zoey intervene.

The four of them broke into his dorm one day (since he had kept it locked to not be interrupted), and after a long and painful talk, Adam remembered, he was finally convinced to drop out of the tournament, and—after an even more upsetting conversation—to give up his navi. That afternoon his friends drove him to Scilab; he tearfully dropped off his PET and Psychman to the navi adoption center, and the two never saw each other again. Adam got on with his life, catching the University drop-out notice before it was internally processed, thereby allowing him to get back to his academics and the life he had before DeeJay.

Adam began wondering what Psychman was doing now. Just as he began to ponder this, however, Adam was yanked back to reality by noticing a familiar face walking up to his cell. It was Robert, escorted by a thin male police officer Adam hadn't seen before.

Robert was a light-haired, muscular guy of Adam's age and average height, who always seemed to walk with a clear purpose. He wore jeans and a green shirt, and had his PET carrying his navi Severman-exe attached to a band around his neck. As he and the officer approached the cell, the officer pushed a few buttons on the keypad and suddenly Adam noticed he could hear outside through a speaker on the left wall inside the cell.

"Hey Adam," Robert said, with a tone that didn't get Adam's hopes up.

"Hey Robert! Were you able to get me out of here?" Adam said, almost knowing the answer. Just then he saw the police officer pick up his radio to his ear, obviously being told something interesting.

"Um…no…I couldn't," Robert began. "Even with my connections, they told me they still can't say anything about your case. I don't know what's going on, but it looks like you're tangled up in something—"

Robert was cut off by the police officer. "I just got word that you're free to go."

Adam was confused. "But didn't you just say you couldn't do anything?" he said, as the guard pushed buttons which opened the door.

"Yeah…" Robert said, also confused.

The officer continued. "Apparently there was…" The officer paused for a bit longer than Adam thought was natural. "…a mix-up. You and your navi are free to go."

Adam and Robert looked at each other, and Adam stepped out of the cell.


	6. Chapter 4, Part 1

**Chapter 4**

Part 1

Adam took two careful steps out of the cell, mistrustfully eyeing the expressionless, bearded face of this new officer as he came back into the main section of the detention room. Adam partially expected it to have been a prank pulled by Officers Jackson and Harold. However, they were nowhere to be seen (Adam figured they'd want to be there to watch when a giant pie fell from the ceiling, or when everybody else ran out as the gorilla-man's cell was unlocked), so he decided to take a few more steps.

"Wh-what do you mean I'm free?"

"You're free. Let's go, I'll take you out of here."

"Uh…"

Adam tried to contemplate what had just happened. He had lost his navi, been locked up, and then released, all in—he looked at the digital clock on Robert's PET—about 2 hours. At least now Zoey would probably never find out, save possibly by seeing the red markings around Adam's wrists from the handcuffs Officer Harold had put on him earlier; as he looked down at them, he noticed they were still marked with dull yet slightly painful red rings, even though the cuffs had been off ever since the officers threw him into the cell.

The officer guided Adam and Robert back towards the elevator on the right side of the flat back wall. He pushed the button with a down arrow on it which was located to the left of the elevator, and they waited a moment in silence before the elevator doors slowly slid open and the three stepped inside. Just before the doors closed, Adam turned his head and saw gorilla-man pressing himself against his cell's glass door with an obscene gesture on both his hands.

Now inside the car, the officer pressed a button on the inside elevator controls, and they started to move downward. The elevator stopped, the doors opened, and the three were back in the police lobby. All the seats in each of the four rows were empty now; there wasn't anyone left in the room except the information-window woman and the three who had just stepped out of the elevator.

The police officer led Adam, with Robert following, straight past the information window towards the opposite wall, which contained a solid, blue, metal door that Adam hadn't noticed when he first arrived. Adam thought there must be something important past this door, because it really did just look like a different-colored section of the wall; if it weren't for a flat jet-black scanner-like plate just to the left of the door (and the fact that Adam was now two feet from it), Adam would have guessed whoever painted the inside of the building just ran out of the dull gray paint that was used everywhere else, and had switched to blue here out of laziness.

The officer placed his left palm on the scanner plate. It lit up and turned blue for a moment, and then green. Adam could see the words "Officer Anderson" displayed on it as the officer lifted his hand off. The door then slid open very similarly to the cell doors back on the second floor.

Officer Anderson guided Adam through the door, but held back Robert who was therefore forced to wait in the lobby. Robert looked disappointed that he wouldn't get to see what was on the other side of that door, but he nevertheless simply turned around, walked to the rows of seats, and sat down in the front as Adam continued on. The door slid shut behind him, and Adam could no longer hear any of the soft ambient noises from the lobby.

Adam turned left, and followed officer Anderson down a short hallway that was only wide enough to accommodate two people walking side-by-side. It sounded like a mild wind tunnel due to having air conditioning in such a narrow area.

They traveled between the dull white walls towards another elevator on the other end, this one black and very old-looking. Looking up, Adam could see only a white ceiling which was dotted with a number of strong light bulbs. For some reason, Adam mused to himself, even the lighting in that enclosed hallway was better than in the second-floor detainment room.

"Where are we going?" Adam asked.

"Into the evidence storage. You're getting your navi back."

Upon arriving at the elevator, Officer Anderson placed his hand on yet another scanner exactly like the last one, also to the left of the elevator's door. The black scanner turned blue and then green, and the door, slightly indented in the wall, opened up while emitting a moderately loud screeching sound that didn't encourage Adam as to the level of stability associated with this particular elevator. Officer Anderson stepped inside and motioned with his hand for Adam to do the same; though he would have rather not gotten inside, Adam figured it'd be worth it if it meant he'd be getting DeeJay back and reluctantly entered anyways.

The interior of this elevator car was considerably smaller than the others, with very dull gray walls and a low ceiling that just barely cleared Adam's head. In addition, he and officer Anderson had to press themselves against the corners in order to not be smashed against each other.

The doors shut, Officer Anderson pushed a button, and the car started traveling downward squealing loudly and shaking moderately along the way. He began to partially regret his decision to get in, even remembering where he was headed.

"So…" Adam began, his voice sounding slightly apprehensive due to the elevator ride he was currently on. He was contemplating whether or not to ask what was on his mind; he suspected it would get him nowhere, but went ahead anyways. "Why was DeeJay arrested in the first place?"

The officer looked at him maintaining the same mostly expressionless look on his face. He raised his left eyebrow very slightly and narrowed his opposite eye. "Don't worry about it." he said, dismissively. "We thought your navi was a criminal, and it turns out he wasn't. Okay?"

Examining the officer's face, Adam was finding his expression suspicious, but decided that regardless anything else he asked this officer would be in vain, so he left it alone.

The car stopped relatively quickly afterward the fruitless exchange, and the black door opened with another screech. The two stepped out and into a large, dark, musty room. This room was quite small, rectangular and thin. Looking left and right Adam estimated it must have been only big enough to fit about five adults. It also had more gray walls but this time with obvious signs of age, such as many small cracks, chips, black marks, etc.

Adam and Officer Anderson were facing another window that spanned from wall to wall, behind which was a somewhat older man with graying hair also wearing the same police uniform all the other officers were. On his desk was a very old-looking computer with a monitor that wasn't a flat-screen.

Behind the window, Adam could see a silver metal door on the back wall with a keypad on it and a label that read "evidence lockup." Beyond, he figured, was a large area where they kept all the evidence for various cases they're working on.

"I need to pick up a bit of evidence. A PET containing a navi by the name of DeeJay-exe. It's being released to its owner, who I have right here." He motioned toward Adam.

Adam just then realized that one of the two officers must have taken the RPET from his pocket when they arrested him, because it wasn't there anymore.

The man behind the window pushed a few buttons on the keypad, pulled the large metal door inward, and disappeared inside. Adam waited in the room to see his navi return, hoping he was still in one piece.

Finally, after about five to ten long minutes, the back door opened and the older officer came back through holding a small, dull white package. He set it down, typed on his computer for a few moments, then picked it back up and ripped the package open, pouring its contents—Adam's RPET and some unrecognizable paperwork—down onto his desk. The window, Adam noticed, had a small opening on the bottom where the glass met the desk, through which the officer slid the RPET. Adam grabbed it, and quickly pressed the buttons to turn it on.

Adam crossed his fingers in hopes that DeeJay would be okay. The screen lit up, and DeeJay appeared on it, much to Adam's relief.

"DeeJay, are you okay? Is anything damaged?"

DeeJay took a moment to check his armor and the audio unit on his wrist. "I think I'm alright," he said looking back at the RPET screen, still with the same deep, mostly emotionless yet smooth voice.

"Thank you," Adam said to the officer behind the window.

"Okay, let's go back upstairs." Officer Anderson said.

"…don't I need to go through some administrative stuff or something?"

"No, it's already been taken care of."

This response only encouraged Adam to retain his overall suspicion. Officer Anderson led Adam back into the rickety elevator, placing his hand over another scanner, and entering through the screeching doors. They went inside, the doors closed, the car went up, the doors opened again, and Adam got out, very grateful that he would (hopefully) never have to ride in that elevator again. The two crossed the narrow hallway, and went through the blue door that led back into the lobby this time simply by pressing a button on the door itself. Adam went first this time and Officer Anderson followed him out.

Now back in the lobby, Adam saw Robert sitting four seats away from the nearest chair of the front row, talking to his navi while looking down at the PET on his neck. As Adam got close, he heard the navi say, "Let's just wait until we're sure it's him…"

He walked all the way up to Robert, holding his RPET in his hand. "This," he said, "is DeeJay," and he handed the RPET to his friend. Robert eyed the screen.

"This navi is…really cool!"

"…thank you…?" DeeJay replied.

"Nice one, Adam! We gotta netbattle some time—"

"I…can't netbattle, Robert."

"What? Then what's the point of having a navi?" 

"I only need him to help me write my music, and to delete any viruses that find their way onto my computer. Nothing else."

"Oh…okay…" Robert seemed somewhat unconvinced.

"Please don't do that. That's exactly like Zoey," Adam snapped back

"Do what? Chill out dude, I didn't say a word."

Adam raised an eyebrow, and then motioned to his friend to leave. The two walked around the left side of the chairs, along the back wall, and then out the glass doors in the center.

It was a nice day out. It wasn't too warm, and Adam could hear various soothing background noises from birds, far away traffic, and wind blowing through nearby trees. Adam glanced up. The sun was getting quite high in the sky now; based on what he remembered seeing on Robert's PET earlier, he figured it must have been almost 12:00pm.

Adam began telling Robert the story of how he had obtained a navi as the two set off going south. They walked down onto the sidewalk, looked both ways for traffic, and crossed the street to the next block which was full of various shops, though there wasn't really anyone going in or out of them. The two continued onward towards the next street. As they passed the middle of the block, however, Adam heard DeeJay speak from the RPET, though he couldn't hear exactly what was said because Adam was holding the RPET down by his hip. Adam brought it up to his face.

"What'd you say?"

"I said, did you hear that?"

Adam and Robert stopped walking. "Hold on Robert, DeeJay says he heard something." They fell silent to listen. Silence. "I don't think we can hear anything…what do you hear DeeJay?"

"Hold on…" DeeJay shut his eyes. "It's…yelling…and bangs. It's coming from behind you, back towards the police station."

"You have some really good ears, DeeJay. I can't hear a thing." Robert said.

"Well, that's how I was engineered."

Adam and Robert turned around.

"It's coming from the police building," DeeJay said.

"How can you possibly know that, DeeJay?" Adam replied.

"Just trust me. Something's going on in the police building…and it doesn't sound good." DeeJay paused. "It sounds like the building is…getting raided…"

"What?" Adam said.

"SHH. Hold on." DeeJay continued to listen. "Someone just yelled, 'Where's the evidence lockup'. I think the police building is being robbed…"

Robert and Adam looked at each other. "We should go back and see if we can help!" Robert said.

"Wha—are you absolutely crazy? What are WE supposed to do?" Adam replied.

"No, you're right…let's just call the police. Oh wait, _they're being attacked_."

Adam could feel the sarcasm splash him in the face. "Look," Robert continued, "We're the closest ones to the building right now, AND we have two navis. I don't know about your new one, but you should know by now Severman fights like a beast. I think we can help! And it'd be much more likely if we fought together…"

Robert continued to look at Adam. He then started off, obviously not waiting for Adam's approval, and motioned for Adam to follow him. "Come ON!"

Many thoughts shot through Adam's head in a matter of a couple seconds. He knew if he followed Robert, he'd inevitably have to net-battle—something he'd promised Zoey he wouldn't do. He loved Zoey, and didn't want to do anything to upset her. He especially didn't want her to leave him, though he was pretty confident she didn't want to leave him either so she might cut him some slack. Conflicted, he weighed the possibilities: would Zoey understand? Would Adam even be able to help? How did he know he wouldn't be hurt or killed by getting involved, or get DeeJay hurt or deleted?

After considering all of this, he looked at Robert about to run back across the street and realized something else. If Robert went back to fight (which he looked to be doing regardless of what Adam said or did) and he or Severman were hurt, he'd feel completely terrible that he didn't back him up—what if something happened from which Robert/Severman would have been safe had Adam and DeeJay gone with him?

He decided that Zoey would have to understand, and that regardless of what Robert could or should have done it would have been selfish to chance letting Robert get hurt just to save his relationship. Thus, he chased after Robert who was now at the sidewalk next to the building.

Adam caught up to Robert at the top of the stairs. They looked at each other.

"I knew you'd come with me." Robert said.

"Yeah…I couldn't let you do this alone. Now what do we do?"

"Well, the doors are locked," Robert began, as he jiggled the glass doors to no avail, "and I can't see anyone inside. DeeJay, are they still in there?" Robert looked down at Adam's RPET and Adam lifted it to his chest-level.

"I can hear them talking…but they're faint now…" DeeJay began. "Wait-someone just said, 'it's not here,' and a different person said, 'keep looking'. And…a third man just said, 'don't hurt me'…and then I heard a thump…"

"Damn…if it's faint, they must be in the evidence lockup, and they're probably beating up the guy down there. Robert, he's just an old man…we need to help him!" Adam said.

"Well there's nobody in the lobby…the cops must be locked up somewhere. If we could free them, we'd have the upper hand. Let's see what we can do from the internet!"

"Right, now we just have to find a jack-in port…" Adam looked around.

"My dad always used to tell me how most buildings had jack-in ports outside near the back of the building for security purposes. Most of the time the ports are guarded with security navis and all sorts of firewall programs, but…" 

Adam finished Robert's sentence. "…whoever's in there would have probably disabled or compromised it somehow to get control."

"Exactly."

The two descended the stairs in a hurry, and went around the left side of the building across the grass that surrounded it and through the planted trees and bushes until they reached the back of the building. The back of the building was dauntingly wide, but it was also flat, plain and undecorated, so Adam figured that finding a jack-in port wouldn't be _too_ hard.

The two began searching, with Adam looking high and Robert looking low. They started from the right side of the wall and slowly moved to the left. Finally, a minute or so later, about 2/3 of the way towards the other side, Adam noticed that about six feet up from the ground on the solid silver wall there was a small, black circle of glass about the size of a penny. "Right here!" he called to his friend.

Robert, who was searching a part of the wall further left than Adam, stopped immediately and ran over to Adam. "This must be the port. You ready?" Adam said.

"Let's go," Robert said, as the two took a few steps back and raised their PETs above their head, pointing them at the port they had just found.

"Jack in," they said in unison.

"DeeJay!"

"SeverMan!"

"_Execute_!"

A red flash of light could be seen coming from the wireless transmitters on the tops of the PETs which were very similar despite the difference in model.

Adam and Robert brought their PETs back to their faces and watched their navis get sent into cyber-space, and into the port. The visual on the PET screen quickly cut to an image of a web-page with very metallic-looking tiles, and pictures of shields floating around in the background. Adam looked around to make sure there was nobody around, and then focused his attention completely on his RPET's display.

DeeJay finished transferring into the port and shook his head to re-center himself. Looking left, he could see SeverMan, a navi with a ruby-red metallic body, and flat, gold, plated shoulders. His helmet was round and also red, with a slightly darker-red blade-like protrusion on the top and two back-pointing gold crescent-moon-shaped blades on the sides. Emblazoned on his chest was his emblem: two crossed white sword outlines on a gold circular background. Lastly, true to his name, he was holding a moderately long and very harsh-looking golden machete-like blade in his right hand. Seeing Severman's sleek yet still menacing appearance, DeeJay, though indifferent overall, decided that SeverMan would be a satisfactory teammate.

DeeJay looked around to see just what he was facing. The web page was small and square, though it funneled at the end opposite the two navis. That was the only way to go (aside from the portal behind him that would exit the net) – from what DeeJay could tell, the funneling seemed to lead to a narrow pathway with what looked like a steel door at the end, likely just before the entrance to some other area.

The navis looked at each other, nodded, and started off in that direction. They headed straight for the narrow pathway, hearing clanging on the metal tiles with every step along the way.

They finally approached the door, and Severman stopped. "Wait, DeeJay…" he said in a moderately low voice.

"What?"

"This isn't a police-grade firewall…those look more like shields. This is just a block of metal-like data."

The wall was silver, with a brushed steel texture and bolts from top to bottom creating a square-shaped connect-the-dots-looking pattern. It floated just above the floor.

"You're right. There's got to be a catch; why would they just leave it unprotected?" 

"At any rate…" Severman began, "…this is the only way forward. You want to take this or shall I?"

"Be my guest," DeeJay said, stepping out of the way.

"Robert, give me something good!"

Robert checked his pockets. Finally seeming to have found what he was looking for, he pulled a small, blue piece of plastic with some metal strips at the end out of his right pocket. As Robert turned it at perfect angle, it glistened as the sunlight was reflected off the smooth surface and into Adam's eyes.

"That's…a battlechip…" Adam said, under his breath, staring at the chip. He was getting slightly nervous simply at the sight of it, but shook it off and looked back at his PET screen to watch Severman destroy the wall.

"Battlechip! TankCannon3! Slot in!" Robert yelled.

"Shh!" Adam always wondered why all the net-battlers he saw always yelled whenever they did anything from jacking in to inserting a battle-chip.

"Sorry…" Robert inserted the battlechip and intently watched the screen.

DeeJay watched Severman's right transform. His sword disappeared, his hand dematerialized and his arm went fuzzy in swirling data as the tank-cannon chip generated a rather large purple barrel that extended out from Severman's arm moderately quickly. Severman raised it to chest-level, put his left hand underneath for support, and aiming it at the wall, shouted, "Tank…CANNON!"

DeeJay was glad he was wearing specialized headphones that he could use to modify the levels of sound that entered his system, because otherwise, he surmised, the cannon blast would have made him go deaf. It was still incredibly loud, but also very effective—or so it seemed to have sounded at that moment. DeeJay watched as Severman released a large, explosive shell from his arm which contacted the wall with great force along with an immense detonation which spewed shattered shell pieces back on the two navis (since they were so close to the impact point) as well as creating a rather thick cloud of smoke.

DeeJay wished he also had above-average sight abilities, because he was very curious as to whether the tank cannon had eradicated the wall as he would have guessed. As the smoke cleared, he got his answer—the wall was still there, but now had a large black section burnt from the immense blast.

"Damn, how the hell did that not break it?" Robert said, frustrated. "I spent all last week finding a virus with that chip on the net, and it turns out to be useless…"

"I think it's just a strong wall," Adam replied.

DeeJay looked at Severman, who looked back, also frustrated. DeeJay thought for a moment.

"Severman, can you try that again? But this time, wait for my cue. I'm going to try something…"

"What are you planning, DeeJay?" Adam said.

"It's another of my abilities. It's called 'noise'. It's not a good idea to use it because it drains my energy, but…it may be the only way to get through this wall. What do you think?"

Adam thought for a moment. "Well…what exactly _is_ this move?"

"Basically, I compile some of my energy, and use it to generate intense sound waves at a certain frequency. Whatever frequency I want, actually. If I can get it right, this wall should pick up on the noise, and be weakened enough for tank cannon to destroy it."

Adam was slightly concerned, but decided it was likely the only way through. "Go for it."

"Severman, I'll try to keep the sound away from your direction, but you should probably back up."

Severman nodded.

"Get ready with that battlechip, Robert," DeeJay called out.

"Ready!"

"Give it to him on my cue…"

DeeJay took a deep breath in. He raised his hands as Severman took a few steps back while still standing in line with the door.

He paused for a moment, bringing his arms downward near his body. DeeJay then exhaled strongly and extended his arms outward, focusing intently on the wall. Suddenly, an intense sound wave filled the web-page, though due to DeeJay's aiming it was most intense at the point of the wall. DeeJay could feel the sound it but could not hear it at its full intensity due to his headphones.

DeeJay kept a monitor on the pitch of the sound, which he did through gathering data internally sent from the headphones to the audio unit on his arm. It was currently at 15,000 Hz.

The wall was not reacting. DeeJay raised the pitch to 17,500 Hz—still nothing.

"I'm…going to have to raise the pitch higher…cover your ears Severman…" DeeJay said, strained.

Severman did as he was told, though the sound seemed to be beginning to hurt him.

DeeJay continued focusing on the door and his audio unit readouts. He raised the pitch even further. 20,000 Hz, now. Finally, the wall began to visibly vibrate.

"That's…it…" DeeJay said, still very strained from the attack. "Now…to increase the intensity…!"

DeeJay cut off the sound, having found the correct pitch. He breathed heavily for a moment, in an effort to regain some energy, and then took another deep breath in, exhaling again very strongly. This time, the wall was visibly shaking. "…nnngraaah! Now Robert!" DeeJay yelled.

Robert took the same chip and shoved it back into the PET's battlechip socket. Adam watched as another tank cannon materialized onto Severman's arm, which Severman then aimed and fired just like last time. The sound of the cannon was no match for DeeJay's output, but DeeJay watched the shell soar past him and connect with the wall once again, creating another explosion and smoke cloud.

At the sight of the explosion, DeeJay fell to his knees and one hand in utter exhaustion. He was breathing extremely heavy but coughing and generally having a hard time due to the thick smoke. The smoke began to clear, and DeeJay mustered up the energy to tilt his head upward to witness the result of his exertion.

As he did so, however, he felt moderately small shards of metal rain down upon him, giving him his answer. He covered his head and waited for it to stop. Finally, it ended, and DeeJay attempted to stand up, but quickly fell back to his knees.

"Son…of a…" DeeJay began.

"Whoa, there, DeeJay, there might be kids reading this." Severman said.

"But…I thought…this fic was rated Teen…?" DeeJay replied, huffing and puffing.

"Yeah, but…whatever."

"What are you two talking about?" Adam asked, perplexed at all this talk of fics and ratings.

"Nevermind…"

The two navis looked towards where the wall used to float. There was nothing, except the portal to the next area.

DeeJay was still on the floor. He felt like he couldn't move.

"Here, Adam." Robert began. "Take this recover300 chip. I have another." He handed Adam a shiny battlechip with a label on it that showed a bright yellow background with a gold circular symbol on it that was red and black and had "+300" written on it. Adam held it in his palm for a moment.

"I can't use this," he said.

"What? Why? It'll help DeeJay recover. Don't tell me you're afraid that using one battle chip will get you back into your old crap…"

"NO," Adam said, then calming himself, "I can't use it because DeeJay can't use battlechips."

"He…can't use battlechips? What kind of crappy designer gave you a navi that can't use battlechips?"

"His name was Dr. Ito and…well that's not important. I can just jack DeeJay out and in and he'll be fine."

Robert eyed Adam suspiciously. Adam ignored it and pointed his RPET at the glass circle once again. "Jack out DeeJay."

Adam watched DeeJay's data compress and then zoom upward, as he watched the web page fade away and DeeJay reappear on-screen. "Feeling better?"

"Yes, I am."

"Good, now time to go back…"

Adam pointed the RPET once more at the port and said, "Jack in, DeeJay, execute!"

Before DeeJay knew it, he was back on the net, feeling better than ever. He looked at his hands and arms, moved them a bit, and finally decided he was good to go. He looked at Severman.

"Onwards, shall we?" Severman said.

"We shall."

Severman went first and DeeJay followed. They both walked into the portal and disappeared to the next area.


	7. Chapter 4, Part 2

Author's note: Really sorry for how long it's taken me to finish Chapter 4. I...don't really have much more to say. Except, thanks for being reeeeeeeaaaaaallly patient, and here's part 2. Also, I've uploaded Part 3 at the same time I uploaded this (thereby completing chapter 4). And lastly, I've already started working on planning Chapter 5.

**Chapter 4**

Part 2

DeeJay felt his feet form on more metal tiles, the rest of his body re-materializing soon after from the portal's data stream. When he had fully arrived, he glanced to his right and saw Severman's appearance next to him. He then surveyed his new surroundings.

He and Severman were now in another area with the same general look—metal tiles and floating background shields—but this time, the tiles appeared to be in a cross pattern. They were standing on the center square of the cross, which was quite large—DeeJay estimated that it was about 20 tiles wide by 20 tiles long. The arms of the cross, however, were each only about two squares wide; it looked like a navi would have to be very careful to not fall off when traversing one of them. The arms were quite long, however, and had flat, round, silver portals at the end of each of them similar to the one through which DeeJay and Severman had just passed. They also had labels right where the arms connected with the center square platform; the one in front of DeeJay was labeled N, the one to the left W, and the one to the right E. DeeJay assumed they were the cardinal directions North, West, and East, as they were in the proper arrangement with N in front of him, W to his left, and E to his right. He hadn't looked behind him, but he assumed it would be labeled S for South.

Further scanning the ground, DeeJay also noticed remnants of destroyed police navi data, with pieces of destroyed helmets in some areas, random parts of orange and gray arm and chest armor, and even two full navi bodies laying immobile on the ground. Based on the amount of remains, he estimated about a dozen navis had been deleted there. "Someone VERY strong has definitely been through here…" he thought.

But just as he had that thought, a rough, deep, and somewhat robotic voice can yelling from behind. "HEY! They got through our firewall!" DeeJay whipped himself around to face the speaker. Three identical dark purple navis with flat, round heads, spikes on their shoulders, and menacing appearances were looking right at them with intense expressions. They were arranged in a small triangle, blocking the way to the rear arm of the cross that was in fact labeled S. "You know our orders…nobody gets through! They need to die, boys!"

"Right!"

"Youuuu got it!"

"What are those things?" Adam asked, as DeeJay and Severman were taking some steps back so they had more time to ready themselves for their oncoming attackers. They also spread themselves out somewhat in opposite horizontal directions.

"They're heel navis…I've heard of them, but I've never fought one before, let alone three…" Robert said. "Stay sharp, Severman! You ready Adam?" Adam was nervous as this would be his first real netbattle in a year, and likely an intense one at that…but outwardly, he nodded confidently.

"Battle routine set," they said at the same time. "Execute!"

The heel navis spread out into a formation such that one was off to the left, one was off to the right, and one was in the center. They all came running toward DeeJay and Severman from the entrance to the S path, the two heels on the sides in front.

"Barrier!" Robert said, holding up another battle chip. He slammed it into his PET. "Download!"

DeeJay watched as a translucent blue barrier appeared around Severman's body. He wished he could get that kind of protection as well, but even not being able to use battle chips, he was rather content with relying on his own internal skills.

DeeJay readied himself for the heel on his left. The ones in the center and on the right were facing toward Severman, waiting for the right moment to make their move. The third heel was now only about 7 tiles away from DeeJay (who had backed up further than Severman), still running at him. "Longsword!" it yelled, and its right hand disappeared and was replaced very long blade made of light blue energy-like material.

"DeeJay, tornaudio, quick!"

"Right," DeeJay said, with a smirk. He took a few more steps back, brought his right arm to his left side, and whipped it outward. "Torrrrrrrrrnaudio!"

A sound whirlwind of DeeJay's height raged forward. He was sure it would hit the heel navi. However, it merely squinted its eyes and kept on running, until just before the whirlwind connected.

"Step-sword!" was all that DeeJay heard before the heel suddenly materialized in front of the whirlwind. It slashed outward with what felt to DeeJay like all its might. With a searing pain raging through his torso from his right shoulder to the middle of his left side, DeeJay was propelled straight backward by the attack and slid on his back across the platform they were fighting on towards the edge directly behind him. Using his hands to increase the friction on the ground, he managed to slow himself enough so that he came to a stop just before continuing over the edge. The N path was about five tiles to his right; he wanted to reach it so he would have more room to move backwards, but decided it would probably be too far to try to run without the heel attacking him first. In addition, he didn't trust that he could effectively fight on the narrow path without falling off on his own.

"Damn!" Adam said. "We need battlechips…"

"Nnnggrrh…no Adam…we can do this on our own…" DeeJay said, in obvious pain but trying his best to sound his neutral self.

The heel navi walked relatively slowly toward DeeJay, still with a longsword on its hand which it raised. "Heh heh heh…elec wire!"

The longsword morphed into two electricity rods, with bright yellow and white sparks flying between them. Each of the sparks moved from the base of the rods up to the tip and then disappeared, making a crackly electric sound as they did so. Suddenly the sparks started moving faster, and getting thicker and wilder. It looked like the heel, who was now only about two tiles away, was charging it up.

"DeeJay, try holding him off with your buster!" Adam said. DeeJay pointed his arm at the heel, and it transformed into a small buster gun. He fired a few small pellets at his attacker. The heel navi took them directly in the chest, but looked only mildly inconvenienced. It continued charging up the elec wire attack. "This was easy. For a navi that got through our firewall, you're a terribly easy kill," it taunted, chuckling. "Now, after charging up this elec wire, your only options are to die by electricity or die by dissolving in the pit below you. Which will it be? My personal choice is the electricity, but I'm a nice guy, so I'll let you pick."

Adam wished he could just jack DeeJay out, but then remembered that it was impossible to do so while a navi was actively doing something else, like battling. He felt a strong frustration, anger, and sense of helplessness, due not only in part to

what felt like his lack of ability to come up with a good strategy. He didn't want to let DeeJay down…he couldn't let him down…how could he just not be able to come up with anything, and let DeeJay be deleted?

However, immediately after these upsetting thoughts, he noticed an idea finally make its way into his awareness. Trying his best not to give away what he was planning to his opponent, he simply said, "DeeJay…I think there's something _behind_ him…"

DeeJay was puzzled for a moment, but he quickly realized what Adam was hinting at. He concentrated, and then yelled out: "GRAAAAAAHHHH!" But the sound didn't come from him. Instead, it seemed to come from directly behind the heel navi.

The heel jumped slightly out of shock and spun around. Still wielding its elec wire rods, it swung its arm around to point to this new threat. Pointing the metal rods in the direction the yell had seemed to come from, it released the attack without a moment's passing. A watermelon-sized chunk of pure electric discharge launched out of the rods at almost blinding speed, with a loud buzzing and crackling following it as it radiated across the platform they were standing on.

DeeJay took the opportunity to generate a note shuriken in his right hand. He jumped up to a standing position. The heel navi quickly glanced from left to right, still looking for the source of the yell. There was only Severman near the opposite corner between the S and W paths, who was still engaged with the other two heels.

The heel turned back around, still about two tiles away. But just as its arm was coming around to aim again for another attacked, DeeJay raised his hand above his head, and threw the shuriken directly at the electric rods on the heel's hand. The spinning blade-like music note flew cleanly through the rods and they broke off, falling to the metal tiles of the floor. "Nggrah!" The heel navi recoiled in some pain from its now-broken hand and took a few steps backward, nursing the hand by holding it close to his body against his chest. "Throwing your voice…and then breaking my hand? It used to be just business, but now it's personal kid!" The heel was starting to sound furious. Its hand morphed back to its normal form, though its fingers looked somewhat mangled.

"DeeJay, hand to hand, before he has a chance to generate another chip!"

He ran a few tiles towards the heel navi, finally getting away from the edge of the platform. Grasping its right shoulder with his left hand, he immediately readied a punch with his other hand. DeeJay threw the punch at the heel's face, but the heel blocked it with its left arm, and used its right leg to kick DeeJay in the stomach and push off, creating some distance.

DeeJay regained his balance from the push, and glanced up at Severman, still over in the opposite corner. He watched as Severman swung his golden machete outward at one heel navi coming from his right, and then turn to face the second running up to him from his left which was wielding a cyber sword. He blocked the sword by hitting the heel's arm below the sword with the side of its wrist and then kicked with his long legs in its chest. Just as that heel hit the ground after falling back, however, the first navi pelted Severman with multiple shots from a gun with three rotating barrels, which Adam knew to be called a Vulcan cannon. Adam then heard Robert insert another battle chip, though he didn't glance over to see which one, and say "use this!"

DeeJay, trying to remain indifferent, began to feel a bit of apprehension. He realized he needed to defeat his opponent as fast as possible so he could support Severman against his; if Severman is defeated, DeeJay thought, it would be game over for him as well since 3 on 1 was a scenario he knew he could not win. At the same time, he didn't want to group the three heels up again and risk both of them being outnumbered and deleted at the same time, so he stayed on his corner of the square and turned back to his own attacker.

Unfortunately, just as he did so, he felt whacks in the face as if someone had launched golf balls from a slingshot aimed at his forehead. Just as he realized that he had just been hit by Vulcan shots of his own, he felt his hip hit the ground once more. "Gaah!"

"DeeJay, stay more focused…you're better than that!" Adam was surprised with himself; he hadn't spoken this much like a sports coach since training with Psychman…

"Right…"

He got up from the floor as the heel morphed its hand into a large blue square-ish gun. "Hi-Cannon!"

DeeJay dove and rolled off to his right as the hi-cannon fired its shell over him with a loud bang.

"Try trumpy-summon!"

As he stopped rolling, DeeJay used the roll to get his feet back on the ground and stood up. The two opponents eyed each other for a moment, both breathing hard. Upon getting together the energy, DeeJay simply pointed behind the heel navi, who was standing still. "Ohhhh no, that kind of trick only works once, kid," it said smugly, its eyes still angrily narrowed. But instead of a voice appearing behind it, a thin, yellow, horn-mouthed virus wearing headphones appeared in a glow of silver light and white sparkles. The heel looked back at it as it was appearing, but turned to DeeJay again, its face now wearing an are-you-seriously-going-to-use-THAT-wimpy-thing-to-fight-me expression. When the trumpy virus had finished materializing, without hesitation it took a deep breath in through its horn, and began playing a cheerful fanfare. The heel navi looked amused.

Though this was one of DeeJay's "native" abilities, he knew there were many varieties of trumpy viruses, and as he didn't have much experience using the move he wasn't quite sure what this particular trumpy virus would do. But immediately when it started playing, DeeJay began to feel extremely powerful and noticed a green glow emanating from his body. It was as if he was now impenetrable, as if nothing could stop him. The feeling started at the extensions of his arms and legs and quickly spread throughout his entire body until the feeling was all he could think about.

He ran up to the heel who, seeing both DeeJay's glow and the unusually intense expression on his face, began to look somewhat worried. When DeeJay got close, he wound up a punch. The heel attempted to kick away his incoming green attacker, but it didn't work at all. The kick didn't push DeeJay back an inch and felt to him less painful than being struck by a child with a feather. The punch swiftly connected with the side of the heel's face, knocking it a step to DeeJay's left towards the edge of the square near the E path. Then DeeJay followed up by grabbing its shoulders and bending it down while forcing his knee into the heel's chest. The heel let out a yell of pain. Lastly, DeeJay took a step back while the heel was bent over holding its chest and made a swift kick with his left foot to the heel's stomach, thrusting the heel backwards. DeeJay took a few steps backward to regain his balance, and then watched the heel fall flat on its back, sliding for a moment but stopping two tiles away from the edge near the E path.

Once it recovered from the hit, the heel noticed that the trumpy virus was just to its left. It turned and contemplated the thin, jolly-sounding trumpet, who was still playing its fanfare. The trumpy glanced back at the menacing creature beside it and quickly became nervous, its eyes widening. DeeJay noticed the heel examining the trumpy and knew he had to attack again before it realized what it was actually doing. However, the heel looked at DeeJay, then back to the trumpy, and its eyes narrowed.

"Widesword!"

It generated a blade similar to the last one but wider and slightly shorter on the end of his right arm, and slashed outward. The blade went cleanly through the trumpy virus, instantly deleting it, and all the way into DeeJay's right side just as he approached. The glow had ended the instant the trumpy had exploded and therefore the slash was MUCH more painful than DeeJay was hoping. He was knocked over to his left onto his stomach, but rolled despite the pain and stood up quite quickly. Standing at the edge of platform's corner between the N and E paths and facing outward, he had to lean backwards and swing his arms around behind him a bit to avoid falling off. "I'm getting DAMN tired of your little magic show!" the heel hollered, only about five tiles away.

DeeJay was reorienting himself when he heard Adam speak. "DeeJay, listen to me! He's going to try to force you off the platform with a downward slash! Block it with your left hand on his wrist, and then grab his arm with your other hand."

DeeJay was still trying to make sure he had his balance. Hearing Adam's warning and instructions, he turned away from the edge and toward the heel, who had indeed been running up to him with his right hand, still brandishing a widesword, held high. After less than a second, the heel arrived within attacking range, and started its downward slash. Instead of hitting DeeJay off the edge of the platform as the heel had obviously hoped, the heel's attack was blocked as DeeJay brought his left hand up and grabbed the heel's wrist just below the bottom of the widesword. He followed up with a quick jab to the heel's face.

"Over your shoulder!"

DeeJay wasted no time. Finally realizing just what Adam was getting at, DeeJay instantly took a step inward with his right foot, grabbed the heel's arm with his other hand. "Wha—hey…!" was all the heel could get out as DeeJay pulled it his shoulder. The heel was launched far over the edge, and the navi watched as its opponent fell all the way downwards into the abyss of data. "Aaaaaaaarghhhhhh!" After four or five seconds of falling, the heel rapidly dissolved into many tiny chunks of data.

"YES!" Adam cheered. He was extremely happy at the success of his strategy, but was also slightly concerned that he was actually able to come up with it.

DeeJay was breathing extremely heavily. He shook himself off and turned around to see how Severman was doing. Just as he looked, he watched as Severman, facing DeeJay's left near and perpendicular to the S path, lunged forward with his machete and stabbed straight through one of the heel navi's chests. Faint, blue 1s and 0s flew out of the heel's back and disappeared; he was losing data and would surely be deleted soon. The other navi was behind that one, and stopped dead in his tracks upon witnessing this. The stabbed heel navi began exploding, and aside from some stray bits of data was nowhere to be seen. DeeJay ran over to Severman, facing the last remaining heel navi; it was now 2 on 1 in their favor.

The heel was visibly very nervous but also quite visibly angry after the loss. He was taking some steps back towards S path, and then turned and ran towards the portal at its end, though not as fast as possible as he was looking down and taking deliberate steps so he didn't fall off and suffer the same fate as one of his partners.

"Train arrow!" Robert yelled, slamming yet another battle chip into his PET. Severman right arm dissolved and was replaced by a crossbow with an arrow sticking perpendicularly out of the center. He ran toward the center of the platform so he could aim straight down the path, closed one eye and pointed his crossbow at the escaping heel navi. With a few hard clunking sounds, DeeJay watched as three arrows propelled out of Severman's arm towards the heel. They quickly traveled all the way straight down the narrow path and connected in the heel's upper back just as it was two tiles away from the portal. The combined impact of the three arrows pushed it forward and it fell face first onto the ground, exploding on contact.

"*huff* That was *puff* some train arrow…" DeeJay wheezed.

"No, they aren't THAT strong. He was already injured." Severman said to DeeJay with a wink.

The two navis were both breathing heavily, and both their operators were sweating though the building was shading them from the sun. The navis were also quite damaged; DeeJay had harsh-looking cuts on his torso from all the sword hits, and Severman had dark marks on his face and arms from what were likely blows and blocks.

They looked around to make sure there were no more hostiles, and the determined that the area was clear.

"That was…quite the encounter…" Severman said.

"Yes…but who…or what…were they guarding?"

"I'm…not sure…"

"Something's ripped through this area…look at all the remnants of deleted police navis around here…" DeeJay was beginning to catch his breath.

"Whoever…or whatever…it is…it must be through that portal…"

The two navis walked carefully down the narrow path to the portal on the other end, single-file with DeeJay in front. There was a sign behind it which looked much like a bulletin board but only had one thing written on it:

"Evidence comp"


	8. Chapter 4, Part 3

DeeJay eyed the sign carefully before entering.

"Alright Adam, you and DeeJay keep your guards up."

"Right. DeeJay, we're not necessarily out of the woods yet."

"Got it."

DeeJay took a few more steps down the narrow path until his right foot landed on the smooth, circular, glass-like portal. As soon as his left foot also made it on, he felt his entire body get swept up into the sky; it almost felt as if he didn't have a body. This was how it always felt entering portals. It actually felt good, because during the time DeeJay's body was in transit he couldn't feel any pain from his battle wounds.

But just as he started to enjoy the blissful feelings of formlessness did his enjoyment end with a hard yet silent slam onto the ground. He felt his body land upright in the new area, but he couldn't yet see anything in front of him except a blurry swirl of dim color. Soon enough, though, his vision sharpened again, and he could see where he was.

The room was very large, and cylindrical; DeeJay appeared to have landed in the center. It was quite metallic, had a 10-foot high ceiling, and was quite a lot dimmer than the other rooms he had traveled through so far, with black walls and no overhead lights. The only source of light came from numerous screens that lined the rounded walls above what seemed, at least as far as DeeJay could make out from the screens' backlights, like numerous control panels.

DeeJay noticed a dull and silent light beam touch down just to his left as Severman materialized from it. Just as this happened, he heard speech from off to his right and froze, not wanting to alert whoever it was to their presence in case they weren't friendly—an assumption DeeJay thought more likely to be true after the resistance the two navis encountered in the last area. He wasn't sure that either of them could handle another battle.

It was a moderately low male voice, with an accent that was thick, but didn't sound foreign; just different from what he was used to hearing. It was rather sophisticated-sounding and soft yet somehow firm and menacing, giving DeeJay a bit of a chill when he heard it. The voice had a certain reverberation to it that made it sound far away. DeeJay turned to see the source.

Off to the right of where he was originally facing, far away near the control panels and screens, there were two separate black shadows. They were obviously the figures of two human-like navis, but their visual details were obscured by the glare from the only light source in the room. They were standing side-by-side, facing the screen on that part of the wall. The navi on the left was quite tall and had remarkably thin torso and limbs just as thin and sleek-looking, almost like some sort of a humanoid snake, but with large and edgy shoulders. His head shape was human-like and seemed a normal size for his shoulders, but not for the rest of his body. The other navi to the right of the first one's was much different; it was just over half as tall, with a very round body, short arms, legs twice the size of his arms, and a round head with almost no neck. His appearance would almost be comedic if it weren't made more menacing by both the darkness and his apparent partner.

To the left of the taller navi, were a number of what looked like police navis tied up with a shimmering yet still dim and blue rope-like object. It was luminescent enough for DeeJay to be able to make out the shape of the tied-up navis helmets which indeed had the trademark antenna of the official police navis. Their heads hung downward, making them seem unconscious.

DeeJay heard more speech from the same voice as before. This time, focused on the two figures, he could make out what was being said. He grew somewhat more confident that his presence was as of yet undetected.

"…and I've already told you. It is not here…"

The snakelike navi gestured with his hands, leading DeeJay to conclude that this voice was coming from him.

Then another voice spoke. This voice was raspy and hissy, sounding almost like audio static than a human. It couldn't be the round navi; or could it? DeeJay suspected it was the voice of a net-op transmitted through an encrypted signal, but he couldn't be sure. Perhaps it was coming from a speaker on the screen the dark figures were facing.

"Search harder."

"My Lord, it is _not_ here," the first voice began again, sounding a little irritated. "We've done a search of the entire building. We've left no room untouched. Security wasn't a problem with that id card so we had access to everything. We've thoroughly searched the evidence lockup both in the physical room and through the net connections."

"Not hard enough," came the raspy voice.

A pause.

"We've collected one already. We know where two others are; the only trouble is collecting them. And we'll find the last two, to one of which we may be close."

"I grow tired of these constant attempts followed by constant failures…where are _results_…?"

"My Lord, do not place the blame on me when it was those buffoons who brought this up in the first place," the first voice continued, now with a tone comprised mostly of indignation with a tint of what sounded like a forced respect. The tall navi clearly was more piqued with than fearful of the mystery voice's dissatisfaction. "_I_ was not the one to reunite the clan. _I_ was not the one who took too bloody long to get from HQ to the police station. Therefore _if_ it was ever here, it is not my fault that we do not have it."

The mystery voice let out a raspy sigh of irritated disappointment and then paused.

"I don't want any more communication unless you're telling me that you've collected another one. I don't care whose fault this was; I want YOU to take care of it."

"….yes, My Lord."

A long pause. The first voice spoke again. "I suppose the only way to make him shut up will be to do as he wants. Let's go back to HQ and start the tracking again."

The taller navi turned towards the tied-up police navis, paused, and waved his left arm in their direction before turning back towards the shorter navi. They then dematerialized into pillars of light and shot upwards, seemingly disappearing above the ceiling. The rope-like constraint holding together the police navis began to glow a bright sky blue.

DeeJay let out a breath that he'd been practically holding in during the navis' conversation. Realizing the two dark figures were gone and that there was still a group of tied up official navis near where they had been, he ran towards them followed by Severman close behind. The constraint was glowing even more fiercely as each second went by.

They had only made it half-way to the navis when the constraint ceased glowing. An instant afterward, the entire room lit up as a humongous explosion erupted from the location of the police navis. Fire and smoke raged outward, and the force of the explosion launched both DeeJay and Severman backward, landing on the ground nearly back to where they had come from. "GRAAH!" they both shouted.

Not seriously hurt (any more than they already were), they immediately got up and ran over to where the navis had been. All that remained was the fragmented and blurry data of one police navi, who was missing both legs, an arm, and part of its torso. DeeJay kneeled down in front of it.

"Can you tell me anything about this? About what happened to you and the others that were with you?"

Silence.

"He's nonresponsive." DeeJay stated matter-of-factly. "Adam, we might be able to salvage this navi if we take him to the right scientist. He could reveal more about what happened here. There may be someone at SciLab who could help us."

"DeeJay…maybe we shouldn't get involved…" Adam was thinking about what Zoey would do if she found out even what he had already participated in here.

"At least, it might help the police discover something to help them apprehend whoever is doing all this, and to figure out what those navis were talking about," Robert interjected.

"Well then shouldn't we just give him to the police?"

"For all we know, this could have been an inside job. Did you hear them talk about how they had an ID card? I think it would be much safer if we gave this navi's data to SciLab ourselves instead of risking that the ID card they had was a gift from a dirty cop."

"Alright, we'll take it to them directly. But first, we've got to free the officers in this building."

Just then, in the real world, Adam heard a loud crash that sounded like a lot of breaking glass. This was followed by two steps of rapid footsteps, the opening and closing of two heavy car doors, the turning over of a large engine, and driving off.

"They must have gotten away…"

"Well…" Robert started, "what would we have done to catch them anyway? They were probably armed…"

Adam realized his friend was right. He turned back to the screen of his RPET. "Can either of you work that control panel?"

"I can, I think," Severman said. "At least, I'll try."

DeeJay watched his fellow navi walk up to the control panel, and press a square button, after which a rectangular window appeared on the screen. Severman continued pressing buttons, typing, and pulling levers and flipping switches for what seemed like ten minutes but was actually (when Adam checked the clock on his RPET display) about one-and-a-half when all four of them heard a moderately loud success-sounding sound effect come from the panel. Said a light, airy, female voice: "All facilities removed from emergency status. Lockdown aborted."

Back in the real world, the two friends heard a large number of loud clicks and whirrs coming from within the building. "I think you did it, Severman! I guess you know more about computers than I do…" Robert said.

DeeJay then turned to the remains of the police navi. He walked over, and picked them up. Though they looked broken and see-through, the arm and head still attached to the body fell limp towards the ground as DeeJay lifted them, still affected by gravity.

Both friends then jacked-out their navis from the tiny glass portal and ran around the closest side of the building back to the front. They hopped up the stairs, and ran to the front doors, which Adam now saw to be the source of the breaking glass. Instead of opening the doors (which would have likely been impossible due to the lockdown) the intruders elected to crash through them. The friends swung open the now-unlocked doors to avoid having to hop through the broken glass along the edges of the inside frames of the doors, and ran into the lobby, almost tripping over a few of the many chairs that had been toppled over and thrown around.

The entry waiting room was absolutely demolished, with no chair left standing and no wall without damage every couple feet. Adam breathed a sigh of relief, however, that there were no dead bodies in this room. He hoped for continued similar luck.

He and Robert looked around the room, and then at each other, hoping each would give the other some indication of what to do or where to go next. A few seconds of silence passed, and the two heard a familiar ping coming from the rightmost elevator, the doors of which then slowly opened to reveal about seven police officers crowded together, who spilled out once the doors opened wide enough. A few seconds after that, the leftmost elevator made the same sound, and the doors opened there as well with about the same number of officers spilling out.

As the officers from both elevators regained their balance and looked around, they eventually noticed the two friends standing near the entrance, watching. A rather tall and thin officer with a rugged and bearded face ran up to them wearing an almost frantic expression that was slowly becoming more and more calm. "Were you two the ones that unlocked the cells?" 

"The cells?" Adam asked.

"Yes, the cells. We were all gassed and when we woke up, we had been stuffed in the second-level jail cells. Those cells are impossible to open from the inside, even with proper identification…"

"Oh…well Severman, the navi of Robert here, turned off the lockdown."

"Thank you son, you really helped us out." The officer looked entirely serious now. "Do either of you boys know anything about this? Did you see anyone suspicious?"

"Well, we fought off some heel navis in one room," Adam began, "and listened to a navi who was with another navi talk to some op in the control panel room, but we couldn't make out anything useful. They were being pretty vague. Then we heard what sounded like two people break through those front doors and speed off in a large vehicle. We didn't get to see what the vehicle looked like though. Oh, and…they deleted a whole squad of police navis…"

"…" The police officer's expression turned to one of held-back sadness. "I see. Thank you boys."

"Is everyone okay in here?"

"Yes, no human officers were hurt…"

"Alright…"

"You two can go home now…we have things to take care of here…police reports to file…we'll handle the rest…"

The two friends looked at each other and decided it was best that they just go. The quicker they went, the quicker they could drop the remains off at SciLab. When thinking about this, Adam again had a spark of nervousness run through him that he might be getting himself into something he wouldn't be able to get out of. But as he and Robert turned around, went through the now-shattered glass doors, and made it outside again, they checked the GPS application on Robert's PET, mapped out the way to the nearest metro station, and set off in that direction.


	9. Chapter 5

Note: I just took the time to reread some of my previous chapters, and I noticed that this site seems to automatically remove anything with "[dot]exe" at the end. So, I went back and changed the names of navis who I wrote about using [dot]exe as -exe. So, Adam's current navi is DeeJay-exe, his past navi (revealed in Ch3) was Psychman-exe, and Robert's navi is Severman-exe.

Anyhoo...

RECAP:

It's been a long time since I've continued this story, so here's a recap of everything that's happened to get people back up-to-date. If you're not interested, just go ahead and skip to where it says "Chapter 5".

Previously, on Rehabilitation…

(Prologue) Adam's dorm room was destroyed at Central University, along with all his music equipment, due to the destruction of the cybeasts and Expo Site. Adam went to the site of the destruction, and talked with Mick, mentioning that his hard drives were destroyed along with his dorm room. Mick mentioned that some professors in the Navi and Internet Research Department of the University do "side work" programming navis, suggesting that a navi could help Adam recreate his music. Soon afterward, Adam's girlfriend Zoey called him, asking if he was okay. Adam met with Zoey, but got into an argument when he mentioned that he would be getting a navi. Zoey reminded him of the training obsession he fell into when he had his previous navi. Eventually, they agreed to disagree, though Zoey warned him that she would leave the second she gets any indication that something is wrong. Having nowhere else to sleep, Zoey invited Adam to go to her house and he ends up sleeping on the couch.

(Chapter 1) The next day, Adam got up and heads to NIRD to find someone to program a navi. He met Dr. Ito, who agreed to program a navi for free if Adam agreed to allow him to test an "experimental" navi-cust system. Adam returned that night to pick up his navi, and that is when he met DeeJay-exe. Dr. Ito hands Adam DeeJay-exe stored on an RPET, the only device able to use the experimental navi-cust system, which has an odd NCP called "rehab" that Dr. Ito would say nothing about except that it must never be removed (and was locked anyway, with the password only existing in the Ito's memory). DeeJay's data had to settle for a night, so Adam rushed home and went to sleep.

(Chapter 2) Adam woke up and immediately turned on the RPET to see DeeJay. They agreed to go down to the nearby net café to try out some of DeeJay's basic fighting abilities. After helping a normal green navi to finish off some attacking viruses, the green navi mentioned that his op is Dak Burner, who is hosting a big tournament three months later. Adam, torn between participating and not isolating his girlfriend, decides to respond later, but the normal navi tells him he only has two months to decide. After this encounter, DeeJay entered the net café building in Central Area, while Adam put his RPET in his pocket to get a beverage of his own. Suddenly police navis surrounded the Central Area Net Café, and soon closed in, intent on arresting DeeJay for unknown reasons. DeeJay attempted to escape, but ultimately failed and was arrested.

(Chapter 3) Adam hurried down to the police station after watching DeeJay be arrested. He asked the woman at the window why DeeJay was arrested but instead of getting answers he was arrested himself. He called his friend Robert, whose father was a retired officer, with his only phone call, and was then thrown in a cell. While there, he thought about his past, his frequently absent mother, and his missing and now-declared-dead father. He also thought about his previous navi, Psychman, who had been given to him by his mother. He had gotten the navi just after starting school, and upon agreeing to enter a tournament, began to get obsessed with training. Eventually, after nearly quitting the University to continue training, his friends intervened, and Psychman was dropped off at SciLab's navi adoption center in Central Town and they never saw each other again. After the reminiscing, however, Robert appeared. Just after saying that neither he nor his father could find any details of why Adam and DeeJay were arrested, the officer escorting Robert gets a call on his earpiece and tells Adam that he's free to go, with no explanation.

(Chapter 4) (Part 1) Adam stepped out of the cell, and went downstairs with the officer, obtaining DeeJay from the evidence lockup. Just after leaving the police station, however, DeeJay, from his RPET, heard commotion in the police station, suggesting that it has been hijacked. Robert decided to go and help, and Adam reluctantly followed. They found a jack-in port around the back of the building, and DeeJay and Robert's navi, Severman, proceeded to destroy a metal firewall. (Part 2) Continuing onward, they arrived through a portal in a large square area with four thin paths leading outward in cardinal directions. However, in the south path were three heel navis, who immediately went to attack DeeJay and Severman. After a tough fight, the heels were all deleted, allowing DeeJay and Severman to continue into the portal they were guarding, marked "evidence comp." (Part 3) The two navis continued into the evidence comp, hearing dialog between a snakelike and sinister-sounding navi. (Reread Ch4. Part 3 to hear what was said) They tried to save a group of police navis trapped in an odd binding but the binding exploded just as the two shady navis disappeared, leaving only a piece of one of them left. DeeJay picked it up, and Adam and Robert decided to take the navi to SciLab to see if they could get any information from it about what happened in the evidence comp. Suddenly, Adam and Robert heard glass breaking and two men running off. Severman used a control panel to unlock the police building and freed the real-life police officers, and Adam and Robert spoke to them briefly before departing for SciLab.

And now for today's chapter:

Chapter 5

The two friends walked away from the police building, still in awe of what they had just experienced. The police building, the building full of people whose job it is to protect everyone else, was just overtaken by what was apparently a couple guys, three heel navis, and whoever the other two navis were in the evidence storage control room. And in addition to all of that, it had been Adam's first real netbattle in what felt like forever.

Adam and Robert crossed the street, and walked three blocks east. Turning north, they continued walking another uninteresting four blocks that looked almost identical to each other consisting only of white houses with lawns and trees. They finally reached the metro station about an hour after they left the police building. The sun was getting low in the sky now, and Adam squinted his eyes as he crossed the street to the West with the blinding sun in his eyes.

Just as Adam stepped onto the southeast corner of the block that contained the metro station, he felt his cell phone buzz in his right pocket. He stopped walking and reached in to pull it out. Looking at the caller ID, he saw it was Zoey calling him. Adam's eyes opened wider as he considered what to do before the phone stopped buzzing. Should he answer? Then he'd either have to mention what happened, or lie. If he didn't answer though, what would he do? He still had nowhere to sleep except Zoey's house, so he couldn't exactly avoid her. But he also didn't like the idea of lying to his girlfriend.

Adam decided it would be best to just come clean about what happened. Zoey would understand. He was trying to save the police building…she would think he was being heroic. Even with these considerations, though, he was still anxious—he loved Zoey and didn't want to lose her, and she made it clear about how she felt about Adam netbattling. She could flip out even though he was justified in battling to save the police station. Nevertheless…

He took a deep breath in, lifted the cell phone to his right ear, and answered it.

"Hello?"

"Hey babe, you've been out for a while. What've you been up to?"

"Well…I've been out with Robert." Adam was trying to find the perfect way to bring it all up.

"Oh, okay. Hope you two are having a good time. I've been out with Melanie. We went to see that new art exhibit down at the museum. It's really neat."

"Yeah…that's great. Listen, I wanted to tell you something about today."

"Huh? What'd you say?"

"I said I wanted to tell you something about today."

"Oh, okay. So what is it?"

Adam noticed he was standing in one spot, staring at the ground. He looked up and saw Robert not paying attention to his call, instead standing around about fifteen feet away looking around impatiently.

"Well, the police building was raided today. Robert and I…" He contemplated about continuing, and then decided he may as well. "We used our navis to battle with the raiders."

"What?"

"You heard right, I was battling. But I did it because I had to. I know you probably are upset about this…but I don't think it's that big of a deal. We came out okay, and I don't intend to do any other battling…so…you know…I don't think you have any reason to be upset or concerned. I made a choice and you're going to have to believe me that it was the right one. So, say something."

Silence from the other end. Adam was unnerved by it, and he waited several seconds before continuing. "Zoey?"

He pulled the phone away from his cheek to look at the screen. The call had ended from Zoey's side. Adam's heart sank.

He slowly lowered the phone back into his pocket, and stood in that same place for about ten seconds, thinking about what had just happened. Assuming she hung up because she was angry (which, he thought, was probably not a poor assumption), he felt that she was being unreasonable. It almost angered him a bit. Why did Zoey have to get so crazy about this stuff? It's just netbattling…what right does she have to get mad at him? If anything, he should be mad at her for being so unreasonable!

"COME ON! Aren't you done yet?" Robert impatiently yelled over to Adam, snapping him out of his inner deliberations.

"Yeah…let's go." Adam said, running up the sidewalk to where Robert was standing. They continued down that sidewalk about twenty feet, and then turned right to face the middle of the block where the steps down to the metro station were. The block was filled with what looked like small business fronts and stores, still though with the same types of grass and trees the two of them had seen in the residential area. The steps, however, looked simply like a rectangular hole in the grass with guardrails around all but one edge and handrails heading from the last edge going downward. Robert hopped onto the first step and Adam followed him as he continued downward. As he descended each step further, he noticed the sunlight fade more and more, until the only light he relied on to see was that of the lights built into the walls surrounding the underground steps.

Robert hopped off the last step and continued forward into a short, skinny pathway with a see-through, plain- and uninteresting-looking glass door on the wall opposite the stairs. Adam was not far behind. Robert reached out to grab the black handle on the glass door and swung it open. Adam finally caught up to Robert as he walked through the door, and they both entered the main area of the metro station.

The area was large, and rectangular, with dull, gray, concrete walls all around, except behind Adam where the door was and off to the right were the pathway with spinning metal checkpoints where one would go to proceed to a tram. There were a good number of people in the area, and a lot of indistinct chatter to be heard. The center of the rectangular room was lined with mostly-filled rows of chairs immovably bolted to the ground.

Adam walked in front of Robert now towards the plain, slightly grungy-looking windows to the left of the metal checkpoints. They seemed like someone just broke a hole in the concrete with a sledgehammer and filled the hole with glass.

He stood at the back of the line, waiting without saying a word. His mind was racing, thinking on and on about his conversation with Zoey; but as he approached the front of the line, he decided to put it out of his mind and just get done what he was headed to do.

Adam walked up to the second window from the right, and looked inside. An older woman was standing there in boring gray clothes, with an horribly blank expression on her face. Her eyes were half open, her face seemed to droop off her cheeks, and her back was slumped over. Either they hire emotionless zombies here, or this job must suck the big one, Adam thought.

"One please to SciLab for 5:45pm." He handed the woman some money.

"mhmmmm…here ya go….mhmfmfmmfffm…" Adam could barely make out what she said, but she handed Adam a ticket, so he took it and got out of line, with Robert following soon after. They walked back to the right toward the checkpoint and went through, hearing the clicks as the metal spun around. They continued down a wide corridor until they reached a number of metro workers who stopped them, checked their tickets, and the let them through, pointing them the correct way to go to get to their tram.

The two headed down path after path for what must have been at least five minutes, left, then right, then left, then straight, and right again, finally arriving at a waiting tram with open doors. They finally got on and happily sat down near the entrance on the opposite side of the tram from where they got on, both letting out a sigh of relief as their rear ends hit the admittedly hard and uncomfortable silver metal seats. Adam watched as more people entered the tram, until finally the doors closed and the tram started slowly moving.

Adam looked around the relatively spacey interior of the tram. It was just as dull as the other areas of the metro station. The walls were an off-white color, with old gum and random other gunk making them even less appealing. The floor had lots of dirt as well as crushed cans, empty fast food boxes, etc. Polls for standing passengers to hold were between the seats on either side of the tram. Robert sat to his right, and other strangers sat and stood all around him.

The tram started to pick up speed, and Adam started idly conversing with Robert about recent movies, things they'd heard about mutual friends, sports, etc. After a while, both friends just sat back and waited.

Adam checked his RPET for the time: 6:00pm. It's getting late, he thought to himself. He'd have to ride a tram back as well, and seeing how disgusting it was, he didn't exactly fancy the idea of doing so late at night.

It was 6:30pm when the tram finally stopped. The doors slid open with a hiss, and the crowd of people flooded out, with Adam and Robert, not wanting to be trampled, getting up after all the others left. They exited the tram, walked a short while through corridors, emerged in the main area of the SciLab metro, and exited through a glass door similar to that in the Central Town Metro. With Adam in front, they both headed up the stairs and out of the metro, in front of Scilab, with the sun nearly gone from sight now. Indistinct buildings surrounded the area.

Adam and Robert turned around and gazed up at the huge SciLab building. It stretched far up into the cosmos, and extended a long distance horizontally. The vertical tower-like portion of the building, less wide than the bottom level, was made up nearly exclusively of glass windows, off of which the nearly-twilight sun glistened just perfectly, making the whole thing look that much more majestic. About 2/3 of the way up was a large orange-and-green Scilab "S" logo.

On the ground in front of the building was a large, open area, with beautiful landscaping consisting of grass, trees, and other plants that looked incredibly healthy. Adam figured they must have an excellent maintenance system, with all their internet and tech know-how. A simple concrete path led from the metro stairs around and toward SciLab, which the two followed all the way up to the front door of the building.

As they came within a few feet, the glass front doors swished open. Though Adam had of course seen automatic doors before, these for some reason put him in awe. The sight of them flying open, the sound they made…it made the NIRD at Central University seem like a doghouse. After standing still for a few seconds, he came back into reality seeing Robert already standing inside and once again looking back at Adam impatiently. Adam finally took the remaining steps necessary to cross the threshold, and once he did the glass doors swished closed. Adam had to force himself to focus so he didn't freeze for another few seconds of awe from hearing the sound again.

The inside of the building was magnificent. Adam was standing in a very large room (surprisingly free of the flashing lights and whirring next-gen machinery Adam was half-expecting), with four net terminals off to the left, a large counter diagonally in front of Adam, and diagonally in-front-and-to-the-right were steps that led to an elevator, and further steps in a perpendicular direction that led somewhere up above that Adam couldn't see from his perspective. The room itself was surprisingly empty aside from about a dozen techs working behind the counter, wearing dark jeans and light-blue button-up shirts. They produced the only noise with various chatter, shuffling, and footsteps. The walls were blue and green, with various tech-related posters at various points.

The two guys walked up to the counter, which was lined with computer monitors and keyboards. One of the techs noticed them, and walked over to them on the other side. "Can I help you?"

"Yes," Adam began, "well, uh, we have the remains of a badly damaged navi and we were wondering if you could either repair it, or extract any data from it, or-"

"Look, I don't mean to be rude," the tech began flippantly, "but we're really busy right now. If you need a navi repaired, just use one of the terminals over there." With an eyebrow raised, the tech pointed to the terminals Adam had seen when he walked in.

"…okay…thanks." The tech quickly rolled his eyes at Adam and went back to work with the other techs. Adam couldn't tell what they were doing, but they were walking from computer to computer, and then around to various drawers and screens on the walls opposite the counters, and then back to the computers.

The two looked at each other, and then walked over to the closest terminal as they were told. Adam pulled out his RPET. "Alright, grab the navi and jack in there."

DeeJay disappeared from the screen of the RPET, and soon the screen changed to show the inside of the terminal, a very plain-looking square area with blue tiles and a yellow background with Scilab "S" logos floating around.

DeeJay reappeared at the corner of the area, holding the torso of the police navi the guys were trying to repair. In the center of the area was a portal, likely to go out to a nearby portion of the larger net. Closer to DeeJay, though, was a terminal, much like the real-world one DeeJay had just entered.

DeeJay walked up to the terminal, and set the police navi nearby on the ground. "I think this is it. It's labeled 'repair terminal.' I'll set it to scan the navi and…"

The repair terminal began making all sorts of beeping noises, and it emitted a light that scanned the damaged navi. A few moments later, after even more beeping noises, the screen on the repair terminal changed.

_Damaged beyond repair._

And it changed again.

_Restoring memory data. Burning to portable drive media. Please take the disc._

Back in the real world, out of the terminal popped a normal-looking disc with a label that read "Damaged Navi Memory Data Recovery," and then the date and time. Adam took the disc, and Robert took it out of his hand to inspect it for himself.

"The terminal just gave us a disk. DeeJay, I think you're done here."

"Okay. I'm coming back." Before he jacked out, though, the terminal changed again:

_Would you like to recycle this data to be made into a new navi?_

"I think that's a good idea…" Adam said. "At least we'll be able to salvage part of him."

DeeJay nodded and tapped "yes" on the repair terminal screen. The repair terminal scanned the navi again, and the navi disintegrated into individual bits. The repair terminal then seemed to vacuum them up, as the bits flowed into the terminal directly through the exterior.

"Okay, jack out now."

DeeJay jacked out, and appeared up-close again on the RPET screen.

Robert was still examining the disc. "We need to pop this baby into a reader asap," he said, excitedly. "This could have memory data from the attack…maybe this guy heard something from those two creepy navis in the evidence computer that we didn't!" Robert, becoming more excited as he spoke, was talking rather loudly now; Adam noticed that one of the techs behind the counter, a tall, thin man wearing the same thing as the other techs and who had dark brown, spiky hair, short sideburns, and sharp-looking glasses, was staring at them, his brow slightly furrowed. When he saw Adam looking back, he kept looking for another second and then turned back to his work. Robert was still looking at the disc, turning it over, letting it shine in the sunlight.

Adam looked at Robert. "Let's get out of here…these guys seem kind of nosy."

"Hmm? Alright." Robert handed the disc to Adam. Adam turned his head back to look at the techs behind the counter again, and found the one that was staring to not be there anymore. "Guess he wasn't that interested after all," Adam thought to himself. Robert turned to the techs as well and thanked them, and the two friends left the building. The doors swished open, and then closed again, but after having been treated so poorly, the magic started to fade for Adam and so he didn't have to expend much effort to not freeze in awe this time. Hopefully he'd get to come back when SciLab's employees were feeling more hospitable, and perhaps once he was able to see some of the work they were doing there the magic would return.

The two guys walked back down the path toward the downward metro steps. As they were half way there, they noticed a kid run up the stairs. The kid had brown, spiky hair, was wearing a sleeveless orange jacket, a white shirt underneath, and black shorts with yellow stripes down the sides. He was also carrying a black backpack and had a blue headband with what looked like a navi logo on the front. The logo looked really familiar, but the kid was coming towards them very quickly on roller blades, so Adam didn't have enough time to figure it out before he instinctively tried to focus on making sure the kid didn't crash into him.

"Excuse me! Coming through!" Adam and Robert each jumped to opposite sides to let the kid fly between them. They both looked back at him, and then at each other with "what the heck" expressions. They watched the kid get off the roller blades near the Scilab door and run in. Once the doors closed behind him, they both looked at each other again, shrugged, and continued on walking to the Metro steps.

They opened the glass door at the bottom of the steps, entered the main part of the metro station (which was oddly identical to the one in Central Town), went in line to buy a ticket back to Central Town, and then passed through the metal spinning checkpoints. A number of other people were walking with them, though some split off at each fork in the path. After passing through the ticket-checkers and following signs posted on the walls, they finally arrived at the appropriate tram, and entered. This time there were already some people on the tram by the time Adam and Robert stepped on-board. Adam sat down first with a plop on the hard seat, glad to finally be going home. Robert again sat next to him. More people entered the tram, and finally, at about 7:15pm, the doors closed and the tram started moving.

This tram was visually almost identical the same as the first one, right down to the grime on the walls and the trash on the floor.

Forty minutes later, the tram began to slow. Adam was looking around and happened to notice a guy sitting about 10 feet away from him, diagonally to his right on the seats on the opposite side of the tram. The guy was looking right at Adam, not Robert, but Adam, and had an intense expression on his face, with his eyes partially narrowed and his lips slightly pursed. He had brownish-black hair and was slightly muscular in the upper body. He was wearing a red muscle shirt and long blue jeans, with white sneakers.

"What is with the people staring today?" Adam mumbled to himself, looking back at the guy. This guy, however, didn't avert his gaze when Adam kept looking at him. Adam gently elbowed Robert in the side and, while still looking at the guy, whispered, "look at this guy in the red."

Robert turned his head casually, and turned back to look forward. "He looks upset with you. What did you do to him?"

"I didn't do anything…I don't even know the guy. I just looked over there and he was staring at me like I stole his girlfriend."

"You DIDN'T steal his girlfriend…did you?"

"NO! I mean…I don't think so…Zoey and I never really talk about our exes to each other. I sure hope this guy isn't her ex…" Adam knew he could never take this guy in a fight. Adam was strong, but preferred intellectual debate. He knew nothing about this guy's intellectual capacity, but he certainly could tell his strength from the size of his upper arms.

Adam averted his gaze, hoping the other guy would as well. Out of the corner of his eye, Adam noticed that he didn't. The tram slowed further, and Adam could tell it had almost arrived at the intended stop. At this point, Adam noticed the guy finally stop staring at Adam. He stood up, and waded through all the standing people toward the front of the tram, where the restroom was located. These trams had no front cabin for an engineer or driver, so Adam figured the restrooms were the only place he could be going.

The guy was nowhere to be seen for about five minutes. Adam finally relaxed, when the tram slowed even further, and Adam could see out some of the windows the tram arriving at the terminal. But just as he noticed this, the man in red walked back into sight, now standing right in front of the tram's door, facing outward. The tram stopped, and the door opened, but just as it did Adam noticed the guy pull something out of his pocket and talk into it while he walked out the door. The second the guy walked out of the doorway, the doors shut again before a second person could make it out, and the main lights shut off in the cabin, leaving only dim secondary lights providing a bit of light for seeing. Adam heard a number of people saying things like "wait, what's going on?" "What happened?" "Did the power short out?"

A few seconds later, the tram started to move again. "I guess this wasn't our stop…?" Robert said to Adam.

But the tram began moving faster, and faster, and faster, and faster, in the same direction, until it was moving faster than it had at the peak of either the trip to or from the Scilab station. People who were standing began to lose their balance, even while holding onto one of the vertical metal poles.

"Attention passengers, this is the metro control center," came a voice from some speakers on the ceiling of the tram. "We've detected some unusual activity in this tram. Is everything okay?"

People were letting out short screams now. The tram was moving faster than anything Adam had ever experienced.

"NO!" many people shouted.

One man added, "This thing's going way too fast! Shut it down!"

"Oh—Okay…just, everyone stay calm. I'm going to try to shut down the tram."

A few seconds went by.

"Is it stopped?"

"NO!"

"Okay, I'm gonna try something else."

"Now?"

"NO!" If anything, it was moving faster.

"Okay…uh…I have some more ideas…"

"Hey Terrence," the control center man said, though it sounded much softer, as if he had walked away from his microphone. "I can't get this tram to stop…I'm out of ideas…if this thing gets too much faster, it'll fly off the rails and all those people will die!"

"WHAT?" A bunch of people in the tram said.

"Oh, crap! I left the microphone on! Don't worry, everyone, you're not going to die, we're working on it…uh…"

The intercom went silent. All Adam could hear at this point was whimpering on top of the horrible rumbling of the runaway tram.


	10. Chapter 6

Author's note: Thanks for the chapter 5 reviews. Enjoy this next part!

Chapter 6

"Okay, um," the man on the intercom began, "we're locked out of the system—"

…more screams…

"—so if there are any experienced netbattlers in the passenger area, or even anyone with a navi…"

Adam and Robert turned toward each other. Adam had a look on his face as if to say, "Oh no, not again." Robert, on the other hand, looked excited, which unsettled Adam a bit more than he already was.

"…please speak up now…"

Robert immediately stood up. "My friend and I are!"

"Really! Oh good, please come to the front of the tram!"

Adam put his face into his palms, looking up just as Robert grabbed Adam's arm and pulled him up and along with him to the front, tripping over various feet and legs in the near-darkness.

At the front wall of the tram there was a small control panel with a few white buttons and one large blue one. "To the netbattlers: Please press the blue button on the intercom on the wall to switch me to local audio…"

Adam pressed the button as he was told. The next words from the control center man came from the panel.

"Okay, great. To the right of the panel is a jack-in port. I disabled the security…though chances are whoever screwed this up got rid of it already. You're gonna have to jack into that port and…I dunno, fix whatever's going on…"

"Okay, will do!" Robert said. Adam resented him a bit for dragging him along into another mess, though he realized that both messes had seemed to have found them first. "Let's go Adam!"

Both friends did just as they had done behind the police building. "Jack in,"

"DeeJay!"

"Severman!"

"EXECUTE!"

(Adam once again wondered why net-ops seemed to always compulsively yell this when jacking in)

They pointed their PETs at the jack-in port, and watched as their navis left the screen. The screen changed to show the new area.

DeeJay felt his body dematerialize into a beam of bits and soar upward, followed by a sensation of falling and finally a light plop as his feet hit the floor of whatever happened to be his new surroundings. As before, his vision was too blurry to see anything for the first few seconds after landing, but it quickly cleared up.

Unfortunately, he still couldn't see much of anything. He was in an incredibly dark area, lit up for a split second as he watched the semi-bright beam that materialized into Severman. From what he could see, he was standing on a platform made of familiar square-patterned tiles, but he couldn't make out the size of the platform.

The portal the two navis were standing on generated a small amount of light, but more significantly, in the distance in front of him there was a yellow-glowing sphere floating above a slightly raised gray platform.

DeeJay turned towards Severman. "Do you know what that thing is?"

"Nope. Maybe it's used to control the tram."

"It's the only thing I can see. We should check it out."

"Right."

They walked slowly toward the glowing ball of light, stepping lightly before putting their full weight down in case what looked like a tile in the dim light was actually a pit. A minute went by and DeeJay only estimated they had made it half way to the sphere.

"I have an idea," said Robert. He searched his pockets for a moment, and then pulled out a battle chip. "Thunder, slot in!"

DeeJay turned to Severman to see what would happen. He raised his machete in the air, which began glowing a moderately bright yellow. After about a second, sparks began to surround the machete, until Severman finally brought it to his left side and swung it outward. A bright ball of golden electricity was emitted from the sword as it swung. It moved slowly, but faster than DeeJay and Robert had been walking, and they were able to use its light to confidently make their way to the golden sphere. As they did, DeeJay noticed there were no pits between the portal and the sphere, and from what he could see with the light, the platform seemed to be a normal square area.

Adam let out a small sigh. "I'm starting to wish I could use battle chips even more," he thought to himself.

The two navis finally made it to the yellow sphere. Before the thunder ball could reach the sphere, Severman swung out with his machete through the thunder and it dissipated with a few moderately-loud sparks.

The sphere was about four times the size of DeeJay's head, and floated with its center just at DeeJay's eye-level. The sphere itself was actually a smooth, polished, reflective silver, but somehow gave off a yellow ambience. As DeeJay approached, he noticed the silver reflective surface turn clear. In the center of the sphere, there were now the words…

ACCELERATION PROGRAM DAMAGED

BRAKE PROGRAM DAMAGED

EMERGENCY LOCKDOWN INITIATED

…floating as red text.

"This does look like some sort of control unit. Severman, can you manipulate this like you did the control panel in the EvidenceComp?"

"I can sure try."

DeeJay stepped aside as Severman stepped up. He reached out to the sphere with his right hand, and put it inside the sphere. Shortly after, he reached his left hand in. DeeJay noticed the red text inside the sphere change a few times, until it finally turned white:

REBOOT COMPLETED.

ALL SYSTEMS ONLINE.

A second later, Adam, Robert, and all the rest of the passengers flew a few feet forward as the tram began slowing down from it's ridiculously high speed. The tram's interior began to light up, as did the area in which the two navis were standing.

DeeJay turned to Severman. "Nice work, once again." But Severman didn't respond, until a moment later.

"Crap."

"…what?"

"…it was too easy."

"Too easy? So what?"

"Come on. Why isn't there any other navi around here guarding the control unit? If he was going to make it so easy, why did that guy even bother to do this? He must have known it was likely there would be at least someone with a navi that would be able to take care of this…there are like, fifty people on this thing."

DeeJay thought for a second. "Perhaps he just wanted to get away. Maybe he was running from someone."

"So why break the acceleration system and put everyone here in danger? I'm telling you, there's something more to this that we're not-"

Before Severman could finish, an error-like sound came from the sphere. They both turned to look. The sphere had gone back to the old red error text, and Adam could feel the tram start speeding up again.

"Now…" DeeJay heard someone say in a deep but smooth voice as he was staring at the sphere.

"Damn!" DeeJay turned around 180 degrees to see a heel navi that just appeared about four tiles in front of them.

But he wasn't alone. More heel navis began to appear all around DeeJay and Severman; they continued forming a circle encompassing them both as well as the control unit. Once the circle had completed, DeeJay was facing the first one again, and dove forward as he heard and felt a huge explosion from behind him. He noticed Severman do the same.

As he got up, his digital heart pounding, he turned back towards the sphere, where the explosion had come from. Instead of the sphere floating where it should have been, though, it was in two horribly cracked halves on either side of the pedestal, and in its original place stood a 7-foot tall navi in brilliant knight-like golden armor that encased him from head to toe, except for his green eyes. He had a relatively small yet majestic red diamond pointing out of the back of the top of his knight-like helmet, silver spikes protruding from his shoulders, and a small red and silver symbol on his chest. In his hands was a very long axe with a blue handle, a green stem and a large, white blade. The axe's blade was currently stuck partway into the pedestal, and it was the obvious cause of the control unit's destruction.

"What the…" was all Adam heard Robert say.

The navi pulled for a moment, freed the axe from the pedestal, and then rose it up above his head. The axe glowed a bright light that shone the same color as his golden armor, and DeeJay watched as the sword dissipated into bits which flew around somewhat and came back together in the form of a large sword with a blue handle and a black blade. When the sword fully materialized, the light subsided, but there was still a yellow aura surrounding the black blade, albeit at a much lower intensity. The navi lowered the sword and pointed it at DeeJay and Severman.

"You're clever. Indeed, you have walked right into a trap."

Adam wanted to jack DeeJay out, but remembered that when in the middle of something important like a battle, it was impossible because of too much data activity. They would have to defeat everyone there, or else make it back to the portal they arrived on.

"My name is Warponman-exe. I'll be deleting you today."

As he said this, he grabbed his sword in both arms, lifted it above his head, and started running rather slowly towards DeeJay. DeeJay looked back and saw there was no way to escape, as the heel-navi-circle was too tight. He turned back towards the impending doom in the form of a giant sword finally swinging down upon him. He put his arms across his face, turned his head away, and closed his eyes…

But the sword didn't connect. He felt the sword whoosh over his head, and a yell from beside him. He looked up and saw Warponman standing, still holding his sword, but off to DeeJay's right. He turned and saw Severman, with the most horribly shocked look on his face, and the side of Warponman's blade stuck almost all the way into his side. Bits of data flew out from the wound, and Severman collapsed sideways onto the floor.

"N-no!" Robert said, his eyes open as wide as Severman's were.

Warponman pulled his sword out of Severman's side, and took a few steps back. DeeJay bent down over Severman.

"Severman…are you alright?"

Severman just gave him an extremely pained yet irritated look, as if to say, "what the hell does it look like?"

"Oh, apologies—when I said 'I'll be deleting you,' I just meant him. By the way, he's done for."

Robert's hand shot into his pocket faster than Adam had ever seen. He pulled out yet another battle chip and slammed it into his PET. "RECOVERY 100!"

DeeJay saw a few sparkles come from Severman's wound, and the bits slowed down so that they didn't come out as much, but overall there was not much change.

"Operator, you can try to save him with more healing chips, but it will only prolong the inevitable. He is too badly damaged. Unfortunately, he will continue to lose data until he is gone completely.

He turned to DeeJay.

"It was unfortunate that I had to do that to you little friend. I do sincerely apologize. But I just couldn't have him getting in the way."

DeeJay started to feel a very small bit of anger. He stopped for a moment, and told himself to stay cool.

"What is your objective here?"

"Hmhmhmhmhmm…YOU."

DeeJay's mouth opened slightly. "Me? Why?"

"I suppose he really isn't aware," Warponman said with a hint of surprise. "No matter. It is time to get down to business."

The circle of heel navis closed in more, and more, until the circle became too small and some of them crowded behind the others. Once there was only a few feet between DeeJay and Warponman, with very little space between them and the heels surrounding them, they stopped. "Okay, you two," Warponman said, pointing in succession to two different heals on either side of DeeJay, "time to execute your commands."

The two heel navis raised their arms. The one on DeeJay's left pointed its arm at the ground underneath DeeJay, while the other on his right pointed it straight at DeeJay. He thought about attacking, but there was no use at this point. There were just too many heel navis-nothing he could realistically do would ultimately save him.

The heel on the left shot out a single, light blue, capsule-like object that flew straight towards the ground. When this happened, the floor underneath DeeJay where the capsule had hit instantly froze, and his feet started to slip a bit. DeeJay then turned his head to look at the heel on his right, and just as he turned he saw a gush of blue liquid coming straight towards him…

And then he couldn't move. His entire body was cold for a moment and then went totally numb. All he could see was the color light blue, and some vague silhouettes.

Adam watched as all the heel navis closed in further on the now-frozen DeeJay. From the PET, he heard yet another, previously unheard voice, very similar to Warponman's yet much less smooth, say, "Two birds with one stone. Very nice."

Warponman looked upward, as Adam has seen navis do in the past when talking to their ops. "One bird being in the cyber world, one being in the real world. I think that should count for extra, Raul."

"Don't get too cocky. The boss planned all this, not you and I. You can go ahead and jack out now."

"But, what if they manage to fix the tram? If it doesn't crash, the CD those two got will not be destroyed."

Adam and Robert looked at each other, both with desperate expressions. "The CD? How does he know about it?" Adam asked. They looked back at their PET screens.

"You destroyed the control unit. For goodness sake, there's no stopping that tram now. The quicker we leave, the less likely we are to be followed. Also," the voice continued, "…to the two ops who are probably eavesdropping, yes, I was the one who damaged the tram's control system. Sadly, our plan includes you two dying, as well as everyone else on the tram. All we really needed was this navi and for the CD to be destroyed, but it's not as if you were just going to hand it over, now were you? The next best thing was to just demolish the whole tram."

Adam's jaw dropped. He couldn't believe that he was in the middle of a reason someone would plot to kill so many people in cold blood. And only a day after getting his navi. He realized that if he got out of this alive, he would need to go back to NIRD and demand that Dr. Ito tell him exactly what the hell was going on.

"Anyway, Warponman, jack out please."

"Yes, sir. Alright, everyone, time to jack out. Make sure you don't let go of the target when you leave."

Out of the corner of his eye, Adam saw Robert pull yet another chip out of his pocket and slowly slip it into his PET. Robert turned to him and put his finger in front of his lips in the "shh" gesture.

Adam saw Warponman jack out, disappearing into an upwards beam of light. The rest of the heel navis closed in further until there was no room at all between them and the frozen DeeJay. The outer ring of heel navis began doing the same. Just before the inner ring disappeared, at which point Adam feared they would be taking DeeJay with them, he noticed a very large, iron-looking weight with square eyes, a square mouth, and arms, appear above the block of ice in which DeeJay was trapped. The weight raised its arms, and pounded downward just as the first inner-most heel navi disappeared, striking right down on the block of ice. Adam watched the weight shatter the ice and flatten DeeJay just as the remaining heels disappeared all seemingly at the same time.

Adam had no idea what to think about what had just happened. "Was that quake chip from you? Why would you do that?"

"I hope this worked…"

"Hope WHAT worked?"

Adam watched the anvil disappear. Underneath he saw…DeeJay! He was flat on the floor, and looked extremely-badly damaged, but he was still there.

"I figured they wouldn't be able take him with them if I moved him somehow, and that chip was the first thing I thought of. Now QUICK! Jack out, before they come back!" Robert said to Adam.

"Wha—DeeJay, jack out now!"

DeeJay, not in pain due to still being totally numb from the ice, managed to turn his head to the right to see Severman standing up, though he had holes in his body that went through to the other side of him. The wound in his side was still there as well, and seemed to be bigger. His expression quickly turned blank, and he collapsed forward, falling flat on his face.

"Urgh…" The feeling in DeeJay's body started to come back, but the growing pain subsided as he felt his body once again become a stream of bits and shoot upward. Adam watched as the damaged DeeJay reappeared on his screen, totally healed, as navis always did when returning to a PET. When Adam turned to Robert with a relieved look on his face, he noticed Robert's expression was still of distress. He craned his neck to look at Robert's PET screen, and saw what kept Robert from relief: Severman had reappeared on his PET as well, but was not healed. Instead, though his eyes were open, he seemed to be unconscious, still with holes in his body, looking like just a shell of a navi that was too badly damaged to function.

"Robert, I'm…sorry…"

His face faded. "Nevermind that…we…we still have a tram to stop…" he said, without looking away from his PET.

Adam looked around and realized that the tram was still going as fast as it had before they first jacked in. He wondered just where they had all traveled to by this point (likely a couple of times around the entire underground metro loop) and thought about what options were left.

"The control system is destroyed…what other way do we have to fix this?"

And he kept thinking, listening to the roar of the runaway tram that represented the progress toward their devastation.


End file.
